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Meet the Black Man Who Invented Mobile Refrigeration and Owns More Than 60 Patents

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Frederick Jones, an African American inventor and entrepreneur, is credited for his great invention of the portable refrigerator. He received over 60 patents for his other inventions. Jones managed to achieve all of these accomplishments while living in the era of Jim Crow laws and other propaganda used against Black Americans.

Jones was born on May 17, 1893 in Covington, Kentucky. At the early age of 9, he lost both his parents and he was then put under the care of a priest. He left school after 6th grade as he thought the strict educational system wasn't suited for him. By 11-years old, he returned to his hometown in Cincinnati where he taught himself mechanical engineering.

During World War I, Jones was deployed as an American soldier to France and he became known for his skills in fixing military gear. After the war, he made a living working at a repair shop, a steamship, at a hotel, and on railroads.

Around the same time, Jones started inventing things such as a radio transmitter for the Minnesota city radio station, a gasoline motor that could start on its own, as well as race cars that he used to compete in local race events. He designed them so well that they always beat the other racers, even an airplane once. He also built movie sound equipment that supported the advancement of the film industry in the late 1920's.

Jones became most popular for his invention of the first portable automatic refrigeration system for railroad cars and trucks that traveled long distances in 1935. It became beneficial in avoiding spoilage of food as well as blood and medicine during World War II. He eventually co-founded U.S. Thermo Control Company (later the Thermo King Corporation.

Throughout his life, Jones was awarded 61 patents, in which 40 were for refrigeration equipment, while others were for portable X-ray machines, sound equipment, and gasoline engines. He died from lung cancer in 1961, but he inspired a lot of Black people that they can do whatever they aspire to do - even when living in a rather unfair environment.

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Mildred Europa Taylor is a writer and content creator. She loves writing about health and women's issues in Africa and the African diaspora.
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William Still
One of William Still’s major accomplishments was teaching himself to read and write in a period when laws prohibited enslaved Africans and black people in general from doing so.
Despite having little formal education, he was able to read everything available to him and studied grammar. This will become useful in his later fight against slavery and racism.

While risking his own freedom to assist fugitive slaves, Still documented the lives and difficulties of the hundreds of runaway slaves he came into contact with.

This produced his popular 1872 book The Underground Railroad, which remains the only first-person account of activities on the Underground Railroad that was written and published by an African American.

Photo: Blog Talk Radio
The Underground Railroad was a large movement in North America consisting of several individuals who worked together to aid slaves in their escape from their captors.
The freedom network began in the 1830s; there were homes and businesses which became known as “stations” along the route toward the north. These homes provided temporary shelter for fugitive slaves before they continued the rest of their journey.
People like Harriet Tubman who helped these enslaved Africans move from one station to the other were called “conductors.” Still was, however, known as a “station master.”
The Underground Railroad extended to Canada in 1834 after the latter had outlawed slavery. By the end of 1850, the network had helped 10,000 slaves escape to freedom.
Most accounts agree that the stories of the movement would have been lost had it not been the works of Still, who recorded the network’s activities.
Born free on October 7, 1821, in Burlington County, New Jersey, Still was the youngest of 18 children. Both of his parents were born into slavery. His father bought his freedom and his mother escaped slavery, though she had to escape twice after she was caught the first time.
When she finally made it, she had to leave behind two of her children, who were later sold to slave owners in the Deep South.
In the 1840s, Still moved to Philadelphia where he first worked as a janitor for the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery (PSAS) before rising to the position of clerk. He later married.
Starting a coal delivery business, Still became a successful man and an important member of the black community in Philadelphia. In 1852, he became chair of PSAS’s Vigilance Committee, assisting fugitive slaves who passed through the city on the Underground Railroad.
His Underground Railroad “station” (home) became a popular stop for fugitive slaves who were making their way towards Canada.
Tubman, one of the popular “conductors”, occasionally stopped by his home during her rescue missions. Still provided shelter and food to many of the runaway slaves, and even funded many of Tubman’s rescue expeditions.
In effect, Still rescued around 800 slaves through his work with the Underground Railroad, earning him the title, “Father of the Underground Railroad.”
Penning down records of the hundreds of fugitive slaves he came into contact with, including the sacrifices they made to escape slavery, Still kept their information hidden until slavery was abolished in 1865.
Seven years after the abolition of slavery, he published his collected interviews with the runaway slaves in his book The Underground Rail Road. One of the interviews was of a fugitive slave named Peter who turned out to be his own brother.
“Being directed to the Anti-Slavery Office for instructions as to the best plan to adopt to find out the whereabouts of his parents,” Still wrote. “Fortunately, he fell into the hands of his own brother, the writer, whom he had never heard of before, much less seen or known.”
Still hired agents to sell his book, which would go through three editions and would be exhibited in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition to “remind visitors of the legacy of slavery in the United States.”
“We very much need works on various topics from the pens of colored men to represent the race intellectually,” Still once said of his book.
Today, his book, which is known worldwide, is important not only because of the records of Still’s incredible feats and the people he helped but also for showing that “Blacks had the intellectual ability” and were fearless individuals who struggled for their own freedom.

The 1968 Orangeburg massacre is one of the most violent and least remembered events of the civil rights movement. A crowd of students gathered on the campus of South Carolina State University to protest segregation at Orangeburg’s only bowling alley. After days of escalating tensions, students started a bonfire and held a vigil on the campus to protest. Dozens of police arrived on the scene, and state troopers fired live ammunition into the crowd. When the shooting stopped, three students were dead and 28 wounded. Although the tragedy predated the Kent State shootings and Jackson State killings and it was the first of its kind on any American college campus, it received little national media coverage. The nine officers who opened fire that day were all acquitted. The only person convicted of wrongdoing was Cleveland Sellers, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC. He was convicted of a riot charge and spent seven months behind bars. He was pardoned in 1993. From Orangeburg, South Carolina, we speak with civil rights photographer Cecil Williams, who photographed the scene in the aftermath of the Orangeburg massacre. He is also the founder of the Cecil Williams Civil Rights Museum here in Orangeburg.Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from the Martin Luther King Auditorium on the South Carolina State University campus here in Orangeburg. The university is the site of the 1968 Orangeburg massacre, one of most violent, least remembered events of the civil rights movement. The plaque just outside this building tells the story.
It was February 8th, 1968. A crowd of students gathered on the campus of South Carolina State to protest segregation at Orangeburg’s only bowling alley. After days of escalating tensions, students started a bonfire and held a vigil on the campus to protest. Dozens of police arrived on the scene. The state troopers fired live ammunition into the crowd. When the shooting stopped, three students were dead, 28 wounded. The three killed were 19-year-old South Carolina State students Henry Smith and Samuel Hammond, and 17-year-old high school student Delano Middleton, who came to South Carolina State every day after school to see his mom and get a bite to eat. Although the tragedy predated the Kent State shootings and Jackson State killings — it was the first of its kind on any American college campus — received little national media attention.
Here are some of the survivors of the Orangeburg massacre remembering that fateful day. This is an excerpt of an oral history project conducted by Jack Bass, who was a reporter at the time. This clip begins with survivor Robert Lee Davis.

ROBERT LEE DAVIS: It was a barrage shots, and like I say, it was maybe six or seven seconds: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom! Students was hollering, yelling and running. So, by this time, I went into a slope right near the campus, by the front end of the campus, and I kneeled down. I got up to run, and I took one step. And that’s all I could remember. I took that one step. I got hit in the back. When I got hit in the back, this is when I got paralyzed. Students was trampling over me, because they was afraid.

JORDAN SIMMONS III: And I dropped to the ground immediately. Instinctively, I dropped to the ground. And within a second — within two or three seconds, I began to hear rounds going past my ears. And I felt my coat, like it was being — somebody was trying to pull it off, you know, with a — and what it really was was rounds hitting my coat. And then I got hit. Prior to being hit, just before, prior to being hit, I heard some — you know, people started yelling. In fact, I remember hearing somebody laugh just before we realized we were being shot at. We thought they were shooting in the air.

It entered right here and just missed my spine. I didn’t see much bleeding. I remember — I remember running, getting up and moving. I think the coat that I had on probably — foam is probably is compressed maybe. I don’t know. I had a large overcoat on. I remember asking him, I said, “Joe, can you see? Am I just nicked?” I was hoping that I just got grazed, you know? And he said, “No, it look like, you know, there’s a hole there, Jordan.” And I said, “Oh, golly.” You know?

And we got on to the infirmary, and there was blood all over the place. I mean, people were lying around, yelling and screaming, and the poor nurse on duty, she was — she was a mess. You know, I mean, she had never seen anything like that. It was worse than any combat situation. It was a bloody — let’s put it this way, it was probably equivalent to a combat situation in a war. The official count was 27 plus three, so 30. Three died, 27 injured.

UNIDENTIFIED: I remember getting shot in my face and being spun around, and instinct said, “You got to get out of here. You got to go to safety.” And the only thing I could think of was to get into the infirmary.

HAROLD RILEY: Just so happened there was a trash can in front of me. I was under pretty good coverage there with that trash can, see, but the trash can had some legs under it. And that’s how I got shot in the hip. The bullet come under the leg under the trash and caught me in the hip, under the trash can and caught me in the leg. If it wasn’t for the trash can, I probably would have been dead. If I would have stood up, I would have been dead. But I had enough courage to stay there for at least 45 seconds after the shooting. And folks was running all across me, crying and shooting. Some of them was crawling. And I realized they did a ceasefire. That’s when I got up and ran to the infirmary.

When I got to the infirmary, my best friend Sam, which he’s dead, one that they killed, he was laying in the middle of the floor. He was trying to grasp for air. And at that particular point, I didn’t even know I was shot. I crossed my leg in the infirmary, and I saw a little red spot on my pants. And I realized right then that I’d been hit down there. And by sitting down, watching Sam, getting emotional myself, when I stood up, I reached back there, I had a big apple back there. I didn’t realize I got shot in the hip neither, see? I got shot in the hip that hold the muscle, just like big as a big fist. And I realized I got shot in the hip. I got shot twice.

ROBERT LEE DAVIS: They took me to the school infirmary. And from there, I laid on the floor on a mattress. At this time, Sam Hammond, we was laying head to head by each other. And the last thing I could remember Sam said — they used to call me Big Dooley, because I was playing football at this time, I was weighing about 260. And this is when Sam asked me, he said, “Dooley, do you think I’m going to live?” I said, “Sam, you’re going to be all right, buddy.” And the next time I look over there, he was dead. I took my hand and put it over his face like this to close his eyes, because he died with his eyes open.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Lee Davis and other survivors of the Orangeburg massacre in South Carolina. The nine officers who opened fire that day were all acquitted. The only person convicted of wrongdoing was Cleveland Sellers, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC. Sellers was convicted of a riot charge, spent seven months behind bars. He was pardoned in 1993. He would later go on to be president of a South Carolina college. On the 40th anniversary of the Orangeburg massacre, Democracy Now!spoke with Cleve Sellers. He described what happened.

CLEVELAND SELLERS: It was just a clear case of the police opening fire without any provocation. There was no exchange of gunfire. The students were unarmed. And what precipitated it was the fact that the students on that Monday night went down to the bowling alley to try to bowl. And on Tuesday night when they went down, they were arrested. And at that point, you know, the state had kind of in mind a kind of Watts riot, and so they began to gear up. And on the night of February the 8th, it probably was 300 law enforcement officers in Orangeburg, and that included the FBI and Army Intelligence and the National Guards, the local and state police. So it was kind of an armed camp there. There were so many police that they could actually have walked on the campus and arrested every student on the campus, one officer could have gone over and arrested all the students around the campus.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by a photographer determined to make sure the Orangeburg massacre remains part of our national consciousness. Cecil Williams began documenting the civil rights movement in South Carolina in the '50s, photographed the scene in the aftermath of the Orangeburg massacre. He's also founder of the Cecil Williams Civil Rights Museum here in Orangeburg. We went there last night in the middle of a rainstorm. It’s just opened. It’s astounding. It shows the photographs of that fateful day, February 8th, and the events leading up to it and the aftermath.
It’s great to have you with us, Cecil Williams.CECIL WILLIAMS: It’s good to be here today with you, as well.AMY GOODMAN: The significance of this massacre in not only Orangeburg history? But I could only think, if this had gotten more attention back in 1968, perhaps Jackson State and Kent State wouldn’t have happened.CECIL WILLIAMS: No, this was really a situation in Orangeburg that should not have happened. It was 1968, years after Congress and President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Acts. But in Orangeburg, there was this pocket of resistance, a segregated bowling alley, that upon — any citizen walking along Russell Street in Orangeburg encountered this on an everyday basis. But it was the students of State and Claflin and others that got involved. They wanted to change that. This was something that should not have been allowed to exist at the time, but it was a reality. And unfortunately, the deaths and the wounding of so many students was a tragedy that we should never forget.AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a clip from the documentary Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre, 1968. This clip features Roy Wilkins, who was head of the NAACP at the time.

ROY WILKINS: You know, the first news story we read in New York said there was an exchange of gunfire, and after this, the police shot. Now, there was no exchange of gunfire. There were no guns discovered on the campus among the students.

I call you — I call you to a hard task, harder than theirs. Theirs is difficult, but they don’t have any dead to carry home, and we do, a lot of dead from way back yonder. Count them over in your mind. These three here on this campus, 43 dead in Detroit last year, 23 dead in Newark, Medgar Evers. Run on back through history, through Reconstruction, through the Civil War. Think of all the dead we have buried. And so our task is bound to be heavier and more difficult.

AMY GOODMAN: That was NAACP head, at the time, Roy Wilkins. And now another clip from the documentary Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre of 1968, featuring Bakari Sellers. Yes, he’s a CNN commentator right now. He was the youngest state legislator ever elected, and he was the son of Cleve Sellers. This was Bakari Sellers commemorating the 40th anniversary of the massacre. He was right here in the MLK Auditorium at South Carolina State.

BAKARI SELLERS: We join here today in our own memorial to remember three dead and 27 injured in yet another massacre, that marked yet another people’s struggle against oppression. These men who died here were not martyrs to a dream, but soldiers to a cause. We find our state and individuals within our state showing no shame in making concentrated efforts to keep this day, that we come every year to remember, off the historian’s tongue and purged from our history books. A group of students built bonfires and sang protest songs. And within moments, along the embankments on the front of the campus, police positioned themselves along Highway 601. The state police then closed in on students with shotguns loaded with deadly double-aught buckshots. And for eight seconds — 1,001, 1,002 —

AMY GOODMAN: That was Bakari Sellers, son of Cleveland Sellers, remembering the massacre, 40 years later. It’s now 51 years. Cecil Williams, you were a photographer at the time. You photographed also — you did all the high school photos of kids for the yearbook. Talk about the three boys who died.CECIL WILLIAMS: All of them were acquaintances of mine. I photographed Middleton at Wilkinson High School. But at South Carolina State, on a daily basis, you could see both of them involved in activities like practicing for baseball — for football, which they engaged in, or in the student center eating a bologna sandwich or — they were very friendly students. And they were so close —AMY GOODMAN: Henry Smith and Samuel Hammond, 19, they were students here.CECIL WILLIAMS: They were students here, and I photographed them for the yearbook.AMY GOODMAN: And Delano Middleton was a high school student who came to see his mother all the time at the university?CECIL WILLIAMS: Yes. I understand he was visiting the campus that night, as he did sometimes, waiting on his mother to get off of work, and became involved in this. However, I think that even if he had not been accidentally there, many of the high school students and others in the city also participated. This was not just State and Claflin students, but others involved in really trying to change things. Here was a segregated bowling alley, something that if citizens wanted to bowl, they would have to go 50 miles, or a hundred miles roundtrip, to Columbia to bowl.AMY GOODMAN: You know, you really were critical in the case. Talk about the shell casings you found. You weren’t here that night of the bonfire, but the next morning you came in. Were there police tape around, investigating the crime scene of what happened? Of course, the police. It was the state troopers who killed the students, but…CECIL WILLIAMS: Yes. After the incident was over, the next morning, very early — and by the way, I narrowly missed being on the site. The only reason I was really not on the site, because I photographed everything that the students did, as the yearbook photographer. But the next morning, about 7:00, I appeared on the campus. And I saw all kinds of things on the ground, and I started picking them up. And some of them were the shells from the shotguns that the Highway Patrolmen had used.
Those shells were later used in the investigation to identify which Highway Patrolmen shot them. In the trial, which took place in Florence, I was called in to testify. And I understand that in about 30 minutes they found them innocent. A tragedy. It was shocking. And even today, there has been no, really, assistance for the students who were wounded, nothing to even bury the students. So, it’s really even a tragedy that affects us today.AMY GOODMAN: And you have the shell casings in the Cecil Williams Museum.CECIL WILLIAMS: Yes. The museum is something I started because I felt that there was a need to not only preserve South Carolina history, but so much of our history here in this state, we were at the forefront, beginning of the civil rights movement.AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to do Part 2 of the discussion and talk more about the history, but I want to thank you so much for being here, Cecil Williams, photographer, author, best known for his photography documenting the civil rights movement in South Carolina beginning in the ’50s, founder of the Cecil Williams Civil Rights Museum here in Orangeburg.
A very special thanks to SCSU President James Clark; Roland Haynes Jr., who runs this auditorium; Ken Davis; Curtis Bradley; and all the other Bulldog staffers who made the broadcast from the MLK Auditorium possible. Special thanks here to our team: to John Hamilton, Denis Moynihan, Carla Wills and Libby Rainey.
I’m Amy Goodman. We’ll be broadcasting tonight from 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Check it out at democracynow.org, the first-ever Forum on Environmental Justice. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

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Mary McLeod Bethune was born the daughter of slaves. She died a retired college presidentTim Walters, Florida TodayPublished 10:00 a.m. ET Feb. 10, 2020

Mary McLeod Bethune started a school in 1904 with $1.50 and five students. It is now Bethune-Cookman University. Florida Today

CONNECTTWEETLINKEDINCOMMENTEMAILMORETo celebrate Black History month, we will be spotlighting key African Americans who had a major impact on Florida.
DAYTONA BEACH — Her solitary grave rests among the serene beauty of Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach.
Yet, the school’s founder — Mary McLeod Bethune — is never alone.
“People walk through here all day,” said Tasha Lucas-Youmans, Dean of the Carl S. Swisher Library on the Bethune-Cookman campus. “Some people just sit on the benches and meditate. Others will even talk to her.”
It's fitting considering the campus wouldn't be here if it weren't for Bethune's dream — and commitment — to making education available to black students.

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Growing up in South Carolina
Her journey to found a college for black people seemed near-impossible for the African-American daughter of former slaves at the turn of the 20th century.
“Her parents instilled in her a strong work ethic and they also encouraged her to get an education,” Lucas-Youmans said. “Census records show she was reading by the time she was 4 years old.”
Born in Mayesville, South Carolina, in 1875, Mary McCleod was the 15th of 17 children born to former slaves Sam and Patsy McLeod. She was the first of her siblings to be born into freedom.

A portrait of Mary McLeod Bethune in 1943. (Photo: Florida Memory State Library and Archives)
Early on, Mary would accompany her mother to the homes of white people where they would deliver laundry. On one occasion, a young Mary picked up a book but as she opened it, a white child took it away from her, saying Mary didn't know how to read.
Mary decided the only difference between white and black people was the ability to read and write. So, she set out to get an education.
Mary had to walk five miles to and from school. Being the only one of her siblings to attend school, she taught her brothers and sisters each day what she had learned.
It was clear then that being an educator would be part of her future.Mary McLeod Bethune's dream
“Dr. Bethune had a dream that she would be an educator or missionary,” Lucas-Youmans said. “So, her initial career plight was to be a missionary in Africa, but she was unable to do that because of colonization. She decided to become an educator.”
Thanks to the help of her teacher, Mary got a scholarship and was able to attend Scotia Seminary, now Barber-Scotia College, in North Carolina, where she graduated in 1893.
In 1898, she married Albertus Bethune and moved to Savannah, Georgia. A year later they moved to Florida where they settled in Palatka and ran a mission school.
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“It was there she heard about Henry Flagler building the Florida East Coast Railroad and she knew the railroad workers would need for the children to be educated,” Lucas-Youmans said. “So, she came to Daytona Beach in 1904 and founded this campus with only $1.50, five little girls and her faith in God.”
BLACK HISTORY MONTH
In case you missed it

Bethune's school in Daytona Beach
The original school was nothing more than a small rented house where Bethune made benches and desks from discarded crates and acquired other items through charity. It bordered the city dump.
Bethune was quoted as saying: “I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a loving God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve."
The school grew immediately. By the end of the first year Bethune was teaching 30 girls.
In 1907, Albertus left Mary and moved to South Carolina. Undeterred, Mary continued to pour her soul into the school and its students.
As the school grew, so did Bethune’s gumption in asking for help.
“She had the audacity to go to beachside and be brazen enough to confront these people, a lot of the wealthy white people that would come here for summer vacation, and talk to them and encourage them to help,” Lucas-Youmans said. “And the fact that they would even listen to this poor little black girl from Mayesville, South Carolina, that said she had a dream that she was going to build a school on a city dump. They did. They believed her.”

The house where Mary McLeod Bethune lived from 1913 until her death in 1955 is located on the Bethune Cookman University campus in Daytona Beach. Bethune is buried right outside the home and her grave is open and can be seen by anyone who visits the campus. (Photo: Tim Walters/USA TODAY NETWORK-FLORIDA)

In 1914, Thomas White of White Sewing Machine and James Gamble of Proctor and Gamble donated money to buy a Victorian-style two-story house for Bethune, which still stands at the northeast corner of the campus.
The house, open for tours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily, is listed on the National Register of Historical places. Beside it lies Bethune’s grave, which is surrounded by flowers with white benches on either side. Near the headstone is a large iron bell that she used to round up students in the early days of the school.
Expansion of the school continued throughout the next decade and in 1923 her school merged with Cookman Institute of Jacksonville and became co-ed while also gaining the United Methodist Church affiliation.
In 1925 the combined school’s name was changed to Daytona-Cookman Collegiate Institute.
It wasn’t until 1931 that the school’s name was officially changed to Bethune-Cookman College to reflect the leadership of Bethune.A school president — who met the president
It was at this time that she became the school’s president, a post she held until 1942, when she retired.
Along the way, she befriended First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who stayed at her home on the Bethune-Cookman campus on three different occasions.
“When the First Lady came, she traveled with Secret Service,” said India Woods, who works for the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation. “The room once had a door but secret service had to take the door down because they had to watch over her as she slept.”
Through their friendship, Bethune met President Franklin Roosevelt and he named her to be chair of the National Youth Administration, a federal agency.

Mary McLeod Bethune's grave is located on the Bethune Cookman University campus in Daytona Beach. Her final resting place is open to anyone who wishes to view it. The grave is located right outside the home once occupied by from 1913 until her death in 1955. (Photo: Tim Walters/USA TODAY NETWORK-FLORIDA)
At different points of her life Bethune served as the Florida Chapter president of the National Association of Colored Women, founded the National Council of Negro Women and she co-founded the United Negro College Fund in 1944.
Bethune died of a heart attack in 1955 at age 79.
Her legacy is already cemented in history, but it will be further etched in granite when a statue of her is placed in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol as a representative of Florida.
It will be the first state-commissioned statue of an African American placed in National Statuary Hall.
Her statue will replace that of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith.
“I think her legacy speaks for itself,” Lucas-Youmans said. “Words cannot describe what she has done and I don’t know another woman who was able to do what she did during that time in history, but she did it.”Walters can be reached at twalters@gannett.com. Support local journalism by becoming a subscriber.

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How Cecil Rhodes Killed Millions Of Southern Africans For Diamonds And Land
ByLiberty Writers Africa
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April 12, 20190
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During the brutal scramble for Africa and Africa’s resources, at least two million Africans were killed in the scramble for ivory tusks for piano keys and billiard balls. At the time, the center of the ivory trade was Connecticut.
80% of the Nama and Herero peoples of Namibia were murdered in cold blood by the Germans. They were killed and forced to the desert where they were left to die in the desert without food, water or shelter.
Germany till date has never recognized this genocide or paid reparations even as they have paid billions in reparations to Israel for the Holocaust.
But Germany’s crime in Africa is not what we want to talk about here.
During this same time of Germany’s massacre in Namibia, the British colonizer Cecil Rhodes came to southern Africa. He believed so much in British imperialism and promoted it. He is credited for saying “to prevent civil war you must become an imperialist.”
Cecil Rhodes was a British man responsible for untold, unending devastation and violence in the region of South Africa.
His goal was to install British imperialism from Cape Town to Cairo and built the Cape-Cairo railway.
Cecil Rhodes was a perpetrator of genocide, who was responsible for the displacement of millions of African people for the benefit of white settlers. He was instrumental in the enslavement of millions of African people on their own land.
He is part of the legacy of white people who came from Europe and became wealthy from the theft of the gold and diamonds in Southern Africa.
Rhodes founded the popular DeBeers diamond cartel. He left Britain for South Africa when he was only but 18 years old. He took over the diamond mines at Kimberley South Africa and others in the area. By his early 20s, he was already a millionaire but he did not retire.
He made fortunes off the sweat of the indigenous nations and tribes of Southern Africa. At that young age, he believed in subjugating Africa for the benefit of England.
Maybe he was born with this kind of hate, or just like other Europeans, he had the hunger to see Africa blood flow.
He was the architect of apartheid in South Africa. Rhodes explicitly believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was a master race. This ideology drove him to not only steal approximately one million miles of South African land but also to facilitate the murder of hundreds of thousands of black South Africans. Many accounts actually number his victims in their millions.
He established the paramilitary private army, the British South-Africa Company’s Police (BSACP). That army was responsible for the systematic murder of ten to hundreds of thousands of the native people of present-day South Africa.
His hateful amendment of the Masters and Servants Act (1890) reintroduced conditions of torture for native and indigenous laborers. His monstrous racist “land grabs” set up a system in which the unlawful and illegitimate acquisition of land through armed force was routine for white people.
Cecil Rhodes despised democracy. In 1887 he told the House of Assembly in Cape Town: “The native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism in our relations with the barbarians of South Africa.”
Now what kind of sadism and self-deceit could that be? You murder a people, take their lands, and then refer to them as barbarians. The conscience of the European colonizer will surprise you, when you view their atrocities throughout history, and how they kept reminding themselves that they were doing right.
His Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892 effectively eliminated the voting rights of African. On many occasions, he reminded his colleagues of the “extreme caution” they must use when it comes to “granting the franchise to colored people.”
Rhodes also went to Zimbabwe. He attacked and killed the Matabele and Shona, although they launched a fierce resistance which was led by their leader Lobengula.
Cecil Rhodes paid a mercenary army from England and supplied them with Maxim machine guns. With just 5 of these machine guns the English slaughtered more than 5,000 African people in one afternoon alone. After that, they celebrated with dinner and champagne.
Cecil Rhodes, gay lover, said he, “thoroughly enjoyed the outing.” He saw the slaughter of over 5,000 Africans as sport and adventure.
How noble!!! These were the same people who brought the gospel of peace and love to Africa, through missionaries.

Cecil Rhodes
Cecil Rhodes was known to help set up the apartheid system in South Africa and the pass laws which were based on the Jim Crow laws of the United States. The pass laws, were mainly colonial taxation of African people to force them to work to be used as near slave labor in the diamond mines.
The Africans who worked in his diamond mines were forced to stay away from family and wife, in compounds with only cold tea and bread. These are much the same conditions you find today in the various mines in Africa. When Cecil Rhodes died the DeBeers diamond cartel was taken over by the Oppenheimer family.
The atrocities that took place in Sierra Leone and other West African nations were what DeBeers itself has done to African people for a hundred years. The greed and gluttony of European governments and corporations for Africa’s resources have lasted from the days before colonization, till today.
His vision was part of the British empire’s vision, on which they boasted that “the sun never set” because their empire went around the world. The then British empire included 77 countries including India and 15 nations in Africa. 458 million people were oppressed under this empire.
It is accounted that one-quarter of the world’s population at that time was under British colonialism. At that time England had one of the highest standards of living, which they achieved through near-starvation of the people in Africa, India, and the other colonies.
People like Cecil Rhodes should not be celebrated by the Europeans the way he is celebrated today, except the present generation are directly endorsing his atrocities in Africa.

Commander

How Cecil Rhodes Killed Millions Of Southern Africans For Diamonds And Land
ByLiberty Writers Africa
-
April 12, 20190
856

During the brutal scramble for Africa and Africa’s resources, at least two million Africans were killed in the scramble for ivory tusks for piano keys and billiard balls. At the time, the center of the ivory trade was Connecticut.
80% of the Nama and Herero peoples of Namibia were murdered in cold blood by the Germans. They were killed and forced to the desert where they were left to die in the desert without food, water or shelter.
Germany till date has never recognized this genocide or paid reparations even as they have paid billions in reparations to Israel for the Holocaust.
But Germany’s crime in Africa is not what we want to talk about here.
During this same time of Germany’s massacre in Namibia, the British colonizer Cecil Rhodes came to southern Africa. He believed so much in British imperialism and promoted it. He is credited for saying “to prevent civil war you must become an imperialist.”
Cecil Rhodes was a British man responsible for untold, unending devastation and violence in the region of South Africa.
His goal was to install British imperialism from Cape Town to Cairo and built the Cape-Cairo railway.
Cecil Rhodes was a perpetrator of genocide, who was responsible for the displacement of millions of African people for the benefit of white settlers. He was instrumental in the enslavement of millions of African people on their own land.
He is part of the legacy of white people who came from Europe and became wealthy from the theft of the gold and diamonds in Southern Africa.
Rhodes founded the popular DeBeers diamond cartel. He left Britain for South Africa when he was only but 18 years old. He took over the diamond mines at Kimberley South Africa and others in the area. By his early 20s, he was already a millionaire but he did not retire.
He made fortunes off the sweat of the indigenous nations and tribes of Southern Africa. At that young age, he believed in subjugating Africa for the benefit of England.
Maybe he was born with this kind of hate, or just like other Europeans, he had the hunger to see Africa blood flow.
He was the architect of apartheid in South Africa. Rhodes explicitly believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was a master race. This ideology drove him to not only steal approximately one million miles of South African land but also to facilitate the murder of hundreds of thousands of black South Africans. Many accounts actually number his victims in their millions.
He established the paramilitary private army, the British South-Africa Company’s Police (BSACP). That army was responsible for the systematic murder of ten to hundreds of thousands of the native people of present-day South Africa.
His hateful amendment of the Masters and Servants Act (1890) reintroduced conditions of torture for native and indigenous laborers. His monstrous racist “land grabs” set up a system in which the unlawful and illegitimate acquisition of land through armed force was routine for white people.
Cecil Rhodes despised democracy. In 1887 he told the House of Assembly in Cape Town: “The native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism in our relations with the barbarians of South Africa.”
Now what kind of sadism and self-deceit could that be? You murder a people, take their lands, and then refer to them as barbarians. The conscience of the European colonizer will surprise you, when you view their atrocities throughout history, and how they kept reminding themselves that they were doing right.
His Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892 effectively eliminated the voting rights of African. On many occasions, he reminded his colleagues of the “extreme caution” they must use when it comes to “granting the franchise to colored people.”
Rhodes also went to Zimbabwe. He attacked and killed the Matabele and Shona, although they launched a fierce resistance which was led by their leader Lobengula.
Cecil Rhodes paid a mercenary army from England and supplied them with Maxim machine guns. With just 5 of these machine guns the English slaughtered more than 5,000 African people in one afternoon alone. After that, they celebrated with dinner and champagne.
Cecil Rhodes, gay lover, said he, “thoroughly enjoyed the outing.” He saw the slaughter of over 5,000 Africans as sport and adventure.
How noble!!! These were the same people who brought the gospel of peace and love to Africa, through missionaries.

Cecil Rhodes
Cecil Rhodes was known to help set up the apartheid system in South Africa and the pass laws which were based on the Jim Crow laws of the United States. The pass laws, were mainly colonial taxation of African people to force them to work to be used as near slave labor in the diamond mines.
The Africans who worked in his diamond mines were forced to stay away from family and wife, in compounds with only cold tea and bread. These are much the same conditions you find today in the various mines in Africa. When Cecil Rhodes died the DeBeers diamond cartel was taken over by the Oppenheimer family.
The atrocities that took place in Sierra Leone and other West African nations were what DeBeers itself has done to African people for a hundred years. The greed and gluttony of European governments and corporations for Africa’s resources have lasted from the days before colonization, till today.
His vision was part of the British empire’s vision, on which they boasted that “the sun never set” because their empire went around the world. The then British empire included 77 countries including India and 15 nations in Africa. 458 million people were oppressed under this empire.
It is accounted that one-quarter of the world’s population at that time was under British colonialism. At that time England had one of the highest standards of living, which they achieved through near-starvation of the people in Africa, India, and the other colonies.
People like Cecil Rhodes should not be celebrated by the Europeans the way he is celebrated today, except the present generation are directly endorsing his atrocities in Africa.

FULL BIO
Michael Eli Dokosi is a journalist and a formidable writer with a decade's experience. He is a blogger, voice-over artist and MC. Dokosi is fluid with both spoken and written communication. He is for the African cause and reckons Africa shall regain its rightful place in world affairs soon.

Dr. Joseph N. Jackson via Facebook
His device is widely used at homes to improve the television viewing experience and while many may not know Dr. Joseph N. Jackson, he is a big deal.
Prior to making the TV remote what it is today, viewers had to manually turn a knob to change channels which required movement. But now viewers can run through a whole gamut of options without stressing.

Jackson is the brain behind the programmable VCR, DVR, TIVO and television remote controllers. He conceived the idea in 1976.

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Jackson is also an inventor, scientist, businessman, humanitarian and co-founder of the Black Inventions Museum, Inc.
Jackson was born in 1937 to Ernest and Octavia Jackson in Harvey, “Jefferson Parish” Louisiana. He is the fourth of eight children. At the age of 17 he went to work as an oil field tool maintenance helper. He joined the United States Army aged 18. In the Army he worked unloading ships in Alaska from 1956-1957 and as a Military Policeman from 1958-1961.

In 1975, Jackson completed his degree in Business Administration from Columbia College, Columbia, MO. He holds a doctorate in Applied Science and Technology from Glendale University in Santa Fe, NM.
Jackson’s fascination with inventions got ignited when he took radios apart even while a kid keen to find the people speaking. He attended a television repair school at night. He also owned and operated a Radio and Television repair shop part-time for seven years in Fayetteville, North Carolina. That experience led him to create the precursor of the V-Chip, technology that is used in the television industry to block out violent and objectionable programs that could be seen by young children.

Lazy Bones Wire Remote before the modern one
Aside the Programmable Television Receiver Controllers, Jackson is the holder of at least six issued U.S. Patents in the area of telecommunications and Fertility Prediction Devices for females, as well as several copyrights, trademarks, and Pending Patents in the area or Aircraft security and Tracking Systems.
He was called upon by the network television industry to testify before the House of Representatives and several Senators regarding technical solutions to television violence years ago.

He founded Protelcon, Inc., in 1993 to market and distribute, the TeleCommander, the first empowerment television accessory designed to give parents control over the viewing content and habits of children.
His other inventions include a personal fertility predictor and a banding machine.

On October 29, 2009, Dr. Jackson received an endorsement from the Los Angeles unified school districts, student health and human services, district nursing services, for his Fem-Choice ®
Presently, he serves as patent consultant to many potential inventors throughout the country.

His device is widely used at homes to improve the television viewing experience and while many may not know Dr. Joseph N. Jackson, he is a big deal. Prior to making the TV remote what it is today, viewers had to manually turn a knob to change channels which required movement. But now viewers can...

Art Lover ❤️ Sex Addict®™

The African Kingdoms of The Great Lakes – The First Humans Who Lived In The Nile
ByLiberty Writers Africa
-
July 25, 20190
676

The ancient ethnic nationalities of Africa are so unique and profound that their tales sends shivers running down the spines of any African who truly comes across them. One of such tribes is the Buganda and Rwanda people, who were one of the earliest humans on earth. Their story brings the noble nature of Africa to the fore and screams to the high heavens, the egalitarian nature of the Black race.
During the lower imperial era, the kingdoms of the Great Lakes were exquisite and egalitarian kingdoms and were known for their leadership and social structure. Of these kingdoms, we will focus more on Buganda and Rwanda, which were at that time the most popular and significant of the kingdoms of the Great lakes.Buganda And Its Origin
There are several accounts to the origin of the kingdom, Buganda. One account says that the kingdom originated from a Kinta. According to the myth, he was the first of humans and his existence corresponds with the birth of the modern man in the Great Lakes region.
Another account says he was a warrior from the neighboring areas who had come to conquer the lands, north of the Great Lakes called Nyanza or present-day Victoria. The story says Kinta might have been the first Kabaka (King of Buganda). Another account says that he was Kimera, prince of the neighboring kingdom, Bunyoro.
In all these accounts, one thing is lucid, the Ganda people have always been at the Great Lakes, which is the origin of the Nile, and are the descendants of the first humans. Buganda only grew to become the most significant of the kingdoms in the 13thcentury, dominating Bunyoro and expanding to a point of covering an area twice as large as Belgium.The Bugandan System of Governance
The Bugandan system of rulership was in accordance with the African matriarchal system. The Kabaka was placed under the protection of his mother, through the siblings. The queen mother, who also had her own palace and went by the title Namasole, was held in high esteem by the people. The Kabakas sisters were also highly regarded.
However, while the king was succeeded by his sister’s son, in Buganda, he was succeeded by his brother. In the Bugandan system, the Kabaka was supported by a prime minister known as the Katikoro and a council of 10 provincial heads and court dignitaries, known as the Lukiko. In the event of his demise, another king was chosen by the Katikoro and the Mugenia (Chief of the biggest clan).
The economy of the kingdom relied on its rich agriculture. The lands of the great lakes were very fertile lands. Their successful agriculture fed 2 million people. The provincial heads oversaw payments of tax, while officials managed the roads to the capital city. Proof of a boisterous economy is that Kabaka Kyabazu had porcelain wares and glasses in the 17th century. The baGanda were also skilled metalworkers.
Buganda started to experience problems when the English explorer Speke, caused a division in the kingdom. Speke make convinced the Kabaka that he is from Ethiopia and that his people were descendants of King David of Israel. Both the king and queen mother were deceived by this lie, and that made the King want to convert to Christianity. It was the same scheme that led to the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda.
Buganda defense system was considered to be bold and elegant. There was a battle that resulted in the visit of explorer Stanley. The King at the time was able to assemble 125,000 men and 230 boats. Canoes of 25 meters length were designed by baGanda.
Kabaka Mwanga was the last independent king of Buganda. The Kingdom was conquered by the English in 1894 and the king was overthrown. The English gave the new colony which was in the North of Lake Nyanza, the Swahili name Uganda. And though it had been occupied by the English, the kingdom remained strong and revered.

Speke had this to say about Kabaka Mutesa at the end of the 19th century:
“He (Mutesa) sat on a red carpet, lying on a platform, he was scrupulously dressed in a suit drawn from the bark of a tree. On the neck, he had a large ring of pearls, meticulously arranged. On each hand and feet, he carried rings alternately of brass and copper. Everything was light, clean and elegant. At his feet the insignia of royalty, a spear, a shield and a white dog.”
Mutesa II would become the first president of independent Uganda in 1939.The Kingdom Of Rwanda
The people were known as the baNyarwanda, as they called God KiNyarwanda, just as the Egyptians called God Imana. The people traced their origins to Northern Africa through tales from the Tutsi who were considered the ruling class. In addition, it is suggested that they most likely originated from Egypt having that they showed a lot of similarities with Egypt.
The elites wore hair dresses that were similar in design to the military helmet of the Pharaoh. In other words, they were Northern people who mastered the Southern territories of the Lake Nyanza.
There was a clear and accepted caste system in the kingdom. The Tutsi people were the ruling class, determined by the number of cows they possessed which was not less than 8 and their role in the country’s defense. On the other hand, the Hutu people were the farmers who possessed less than 8 cows.
However, a Hutu could attain the Tutsi class when he met the criteria and vice versa, but the ruling class remained the Tutsi. Both people had the same language, the same God, and were ruled by the same king. The aristocrats were involved in poetry and thinking and the poetic styles of the Rwandan kingdom were created by the queen mother who was called Nyirarumaga.
The baNyarwanda were known for their intense inclination to war, they had really brave wrestlers, they were also known to respect women. According to Yolande Mukagasana, a war had once been temporarily stopped because a woman soldier was unmasked in battle. Women were seriously discouraged from engaging in those fierce exploits. Rwanda at some point became allies with Burundi, making their ties particularly strong.
The Belgian and German occupants of the land would come up with the idea of Tutsi and Hutu being two different ethnic groups and this, unfortunately, led to the Tutsi having a superiority complex that will eventually lead to the infamous Rwandan genocide. That is what the explorer Speke also tried with Mutesa in Buganda.Conclusion
All over Africa, we are blessed with the memory and presence of the first men – the first humans. At a time when the other part of the world was in darkness, these regions of Africa were beaming in light, industry, architecture, education and all forms of an advanced civilization.
But at every turn where you find misfortune for the African people, there was always a presence of Europeans. Europeans who were either killing the Africans and stealing their wealth or lying to them about their friends and neighbors to cause war.
But even though the Europeans are still bent on dividing and ruling Africa, history and noble tales such as these are important so that Africans worldwide can understand who they are fully and be proud of their heritage.
Please, you can like our Facebook Page OR join Our Facebook Group to join the African Discussion.

Recluse

Ever since my first back-to-back research trips to Egypt (1996) and Mexico (1997), I’ve been discovering, researching, and presenting profound cultural parallels shared by ancient civilisations worldwide. The Maya/Egyptian parallels are among the most striking.

Some of these parallels were recognised by Victorian and pre-Victorian era scholars and writers like Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, Edward Herbert Thompson, Augustus Le Plongeon, Ignatius Donnelly, and Zelia Nuttall. Many of these scholars credited Plato’s lost continent of Atlantis with being the source of the similarities. Other parallels I’ve discovered through my own original research and investigation.

The Victorian-era idea that the lost continent of Atlantis was the source of the parallels (i.e., a theory called “diffusion”) has fallen out of favour with scholars over the past several decades. As a result, nineteenth century ideas have been shelved in favour of a new theory called “independent invention,” which holds that ancient inventions, such as pyramid construction, naturally occurred in more than one place at the same or different times. As the Paul McCartney/Michael Jackson duet “Ebony and Ivory” put it, “people are the same wherever you go.” This “independent invention” theory has notably been maintained by modern scholars like Kenneth Feder, professor of archaeology at Central Connecticut State University.

In my 2011 book Written in Stone, I revived the theory of the Victorian-age scholars, and took their work a step further, by exploring new evidence for the possibility that a primordial “Mother Culture”—now lost to time—flourished during a prehistoric “Golden Age.” In my subsequent books, articles, videos and lectures, I explained how this Golden Age was documented by the Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, and other ancient civilisations; and I hypothesised that this Mother Culture may have been the source of the parallels shared by the world’s first cultures—a kind of “missing chapter” in the human story, as Graham Hancock puts it.

Are the following “10 Mayan & Egyptian Parallels” evidence that a sophisticated Golden Age civilisation—now almost completely forgotten—once existed in the ancient past, and was a kind of “Mother Culture” to the world´s first “known” cultures, like the Egyptians and Maya?

Both the Maya and the Egyptians built pyramids. In fact, both cultures didn’t just build pyramids, they built similar “step pyramids” (i.e., pyramids with a series of steps leading upward toward the apex), as we can see here.

What’s more, there is clear evidence that both Egypt’s and Mexico’s “step pyramid” builders engaged in a kind of “serpent cult.” Because of its ability to shed its skin, the serpent symbolises regeneration and rebirth—concepts shared by both the Egyptians and Maya. We´re told by scholars that these concepts figured prominently in their metaphysical beliefs of eternal life, and life after death. With this in mind, it is especially interesting to note that not only did both the Egyptians and Maya build similar “step pyramids,” but they also crafted similar “stone serpents,” which are visible within sight of their parallel step pyramids. We can see examples of this in the photo below:

Left: a stone serpent within sight of the step Pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza, Mexico. Right: a series of stone serpents within sight of the step Pyramid of Saqqara, just outside Cairo, Egypt.

What are the chances that two unrelated civilisations separated by the Atlantic Ocean would have come up with not only “step pyramids,” but also adjacent or nearby stone serpents?

By itself, this “step pyramid/stone serpent” parallel is interesting, but certainly not dispositive or definitive proof of a direct link between the two civilisations. But there’s more, much more.…

The parallel Mayan/Egyptian phenomenon of elongated skulls and cranial deformation has been known to scholars for centuries. Among both the Maya and the Egyptians, the practice seems to have been performed to differentiate the elite from the lower classes.

The earliest descriptions of cranial deformation among the Maya were reported by Spanish chroniclers in the 16th century. In 1843, the American explorer John L. Stephens published Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, describing an artificially deformed skull that he found during one of his excavations. The nineteenth century archaeologist Augustus Le Plongeon (1826 – 1908), in his book Queen Moo and The Egyptian Sphinx, described the practice among the peoples of the Mayan cities of Copan and Palenque. Popular authors like Ignatius L. Donnelly (1831 – 1901), in his book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, elaborated on Le Plongeon’s analysis.

According to an article written by a series of doctors entitled “A Look at Mayan Artificial Cranial Deformation Practices: Morphological and Cultural Aspects,” which was published in December 2010 in the journal Neurosurgical FOCUS, the Mayan practice of cranial deformation served to differentiate the elite from the common classes:

“Induced deformation of the cranial vault is one form of permanent alteration of the body that has been performed by human beings from the beginning of history as a way of differentiating from others…High-ranking Mayan families of the Classic period differentiated themselves from the lower classes with their head shape. This social hierarchy can be seen in pottery, figurines, drawings, monuments, and architecture, where characters with oblique deformation are dominant.”
—A Look at Mayan Artificial Cranial Deformation Practices: Morphological and Cultural Aspects.

The idea that the Mayan elite practiced cranial deformation is interesting because the Egyptian elite also seem to have performed a skull elongation technique, possibly for the very same reason of differentiating themselves from the lower classes or common people. Shown in the example above is a statue of an elongated skull from Egypt’s Amarna Period, the era of the reign of Akhenaten (1353-1336 BCE). The skull is described by scholars as belonging to the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenophis IV, also known as Akhenaten. Artwork featuring Akhenaten’s daughters, Nofernoferuaton and Nofernoferure, with elongated skulls (c. 1375-1358 BC) is repeated in other pieces of Amarna art.

Do the elongated skulls of both the Egyptian and Mayan “elite” point to a connection between the two civilisations?

There is also evidence of real-life cranial deformation in Egypt, as described in a report titled “The Sociopolitical History & Physiological Underpinnings of Skull Deformation,” published by the Department of Neurological Surgery, Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. Interestingly, the report calls for more attention to be given to the “sociopolitical implications” of the practice. The report abstract states the following:

“In this report, the evidence, mechanisms, and rationale for the practice of artificial cranial deformation (ACD) in ancient Peru and during Akhenaten’s reign in the 18th dynasty in Egypt (1375-1358 BCE) are reviewed. The authors argue that insufficient attention has been given to the sociopolitical implications of the practice in both regions.”— The Sociopolitical History & Physiological Underpinnings of Skull Deformation,” Columbia University College.

Admittedly, the idea that both the Mayan and Egyptian elite practiced cranial deformation to perhaps differentiate them from the lower classes does not directly connect the two civilisations. However, the fact that the pyramid-building Egyptians and Maya both practiced this strange technique is certainly provocative and indicates the possibility of a connection.

The corbel arch was used in both Mayan and Egyptian architecture. A corbel arch (also called “corbeled” or “corbelled arch”) is an arch that uses the so-called “corbeling” construction method to span a space or void. A corbeled arch is constructed by offsetting successive courses of stone (or brick) in such a way that they project towards the archway’s centre from each supporting side, until the courses meet at the archway’s apex. The gap at the apex is then bridged with a flat stone.

The work of pioneering nineteenth century archaeologist and intrepid explorer Augustus Le Plongeon has largely been discredited because of its diffusionist basis. Le Plongeon insisted that the parallel corbeled arch was evidence that the world’s first cultures were children of a much older civilisation named Atlantis. Le Plongeon believed that the universality of the corbel arch in antiquity was strong evidence of shared wisdom across the Atlantic Ocean.

The scholar Lawrence G. Desmond, after receiving his PhD in anthropology and archaeology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, carried out archaeological research in Mexico and Guatemala for more than forty years. He is regarded as a leading scholar in the field of Maya archaeology. While expressing some reservations about Le Plongeon’s over-active imagination in an article chronicling Le Plongeon’s “downfall,” Desmond nonetheless appreciated the significance and essential correctness of Le Plongeon’s ideas regarding the corbeled arches shared by the Maya and Egyptians. Desmond credits Le Plongeon for pointing out parallels that (until now) have not yet been sufficiently explained:

“…Augustus Le Plongeon, a pioneering Mayanist, renowned for having made the earliest thorough and systematic photographic documentation of archaeological sites in Yucatan…
…for Le Plongeon, the most important evidence of cultural diffusion was the Mayas’ corbelled arch. The arches…he believed, had proportions that related to the “mystic numbers 3.5.7” which he stated were used by ancient Masonic master builders…Those same proportions, he also noted, were found in tombs in Chaldea and Etruria, in ancient Greek structures and as part of the Great Pyramid in Egypt… He was basically on the right track methodologically, and he did make a number of intriguing observations and analogies…”
—Lawrence G. Desmond, Augustus Le Plongeon: A Fall From Archaeological Grace.

Left: Example of Maya glyphs in the museum at Palenque, Mexico. Right: Egyptian Hieroglyphs from the tomb of Seti I, c. 13th century BC.

The Egyptians and Mayans both used hieroglyphs, consisting of pictographs or symbols, to express meaning in written language. Mayan writing, which is often described by scholars as the most sophisticated writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas, was dubbed “hieroglyphics” (or hieroglyphs) by early eighteenth and nineteenth century European explorers, including Augustus Le Plongeon, who noticed its similarity to Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Egyptian hieroglyphs consist of phonograms, which are placed at the beginning of words to represent sounds, whereas ideograms are used to represent objects or ideas. Mayan hieroglyphs consist of pictographs written in neat blocks that include phonograms and ideograms.

Is it possible that Mayan and Egyptian glyphs both evolved from the same “proto-language” or that perhaps one of them may have in fact served as an origin for the other?

Obtaining a satisfactory answer to that question depends on the successful decryption of Maya writing, which has been made vastly difficult by the bonfires of the sixteenth century christian Conquistadors, who regarded the precious and irreplaceable Mayan scrolls as the work of the devil.

6 – Similar Scenes & Motifs

There are many similar scenes and motifs that link the Mayan and Egyptian civilisations, too many to list all of them here. For purposes of this discussion, I’ve narrowed down to three particularly powerful motifs:

Left: The Codex Mendoza is an Aztec codex created c. 1541 depicting a warrior grasping the hair of a submissive captive. Right: The Narmer Palette depicts a pharaoh (usually identified as King Narmer) grasping the hair of a submissive captive.

To be clear, this is not a Mayan/Egyptian parallel, but an Aztec/Egyptian one. However, the smiting scene is depicted on Mayan artefacts as well.

When I first recognised this parallel motif in the late 1990s, I found it discouraging. Why? Because at the time, it seemed to me to convey barbarism. More precisely, the barbaric cruelty of a warlike people did not seem consistent with the metaphysically advanced and peaceful citizens (possible descendants of a highly evolved Golden Age mother culture) that I believed may have formed the bulk of Mayan and Egyptian society.

However, as I continued to study this parallel “Smiting Scene” (Egyptologists call it a Smiting Scene, but Mayan scholars have no term for it), I became convinced that the scene does not depict the actual slaughter of one’s enemies. For a people as spiritual as the Egyptians to have created tens of thousands of Smiting Scenes (which appear abundantly in Egyptian culture, including on jewellery, furniture, amulets, and even on the walls of temples) did not seem in keeping with their high spiritual values.

I came to believe instead that the scene could convey a metaphor—the slaying of one’s ego or inner demons, which is the real enemy of a spiritual seeker. In other words, the scene conveys a formula for slaughtering the physical animal nature of man (i.e., controlling or mastering the ego), which, as I explained in my 2011 book, Written in Stone, was a central doctrine in the ancient Egyptian religion and indeed in all of the world’s ancient religions.

(B) PARALLEL INITIATION SCENE

Left: Mesoamerican scene from the Codex Borgia, from south-central Mexico (Seler 1902–1923, II: codex page 31; cf. Díaz and Rodgers 1993, Plate 31), depicting what may be an initiation or baptism by water. Right: Egyptian scene from the Temple of Esna depicting what appears to be an initiation or baptism by water. According to John L. Sorenson, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University (BYU): “The Egyptian rite represented has become known as “the baptism of Pharaoh” (Gardiner 1950).”

Another interesting Maya / Egyptian parallel is visible in scenes that depict what look like initiation or baptism rituals. John L. Sorenson, emeritus professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University (BYU) wrote:

“…two ritual scenes are juxtaposed…one from Egypt… [and one] from the Codex Borgia…Mexico…dated shortly before the Spanish Conquest but surely it was based on earlier pictorial documents. While the two scenes differ in style, they share significant motifs. Shown are streams of water in the Mexican case and of ankh signs in the Egyptian scene, both of which in the respective traditions signified “life.” They are being poured by ritual officiants (divinities) positioned on either side of a central figure. The poured streams cross above his head. The Egyptian rite represented has become known as “the baptism of Pharaoh”…Over fifty years ago some of the corresponding characteristics of the two were pointed out to William F. Albright, the noted Syro-Palestinian archaeologist. He called the resemblance between the two scenes “most extraordinary” (personal communication, June 23, 1954) and continued that if the Mesoamerican scene had come from Mesopotamia “one would have to assume some connection” with Egypt.”
—John L. Sorenson, A Complex of Ritual and Ideology Shared by Mesoamerica and the Ancient Near East.

It is difficult to state with certainty what this parallel scene meant to the Egyptians and Maya. Did it have the same meaning for both cultures? The Egyptian scene has become known among scholars as the “baptism of Pharaoh,” because they are inclined to believe that it might have been a purification ritual.

Did the Mayan scene hold the same meaning? It is also possible that the symbolism shown here expresses the idea of initiation. Traditionally, the concept of initiation serves to reorient the individual away from his lower materialistic “animal” self. He is reoriented, instead, toward his higher “spiritual” Self and toward a more spiritual way of looking at the world. Water serves to cleanse, and it therefore appears possible that this parallel scene may depict a kind of initiation through cleansing, an idea that was apparently shared by both the Egyptians and Maya.

(C) PARALLEL TWIN SERPENT MOTIF

Left: Aztec sculpture featuring twin serpents facing opposite directions, often described as “The Double-headed serpent,” in the British Museum. Right: Egyptian Aten or sundisk symbols like this one appear above the main entrances to Egyptian temples and feature twin serpents emerging from the solar orb, facing opposite directions.

Another Mayan and Egyptian parallel is visible in the Twin Serpent motif. So-called “serpent bars,” depicting a serpent with twin heads and no tail, adorn the lintels of some Mayan temples, such as the Nunnery at Uxmal. Mayan statues and reliefs depict serpent bars in the hands of kings and priests. An example of this is depicted in the book, Ancient Civilizations of Mexico and Central America by Mesoamerican archaeologist Herbert Joseph Spinden (1879–1967). Spinden published the following drawings of Mayan serpent bars:

Note the similarity that these Mayan “serpent bars” share with the Egyptian Aten symbol, which adorns the lintels of some Egyptian temples, like Trojan’s Kiosk at Philae. Both the Mayan “serpent bar” and the Egyptian Aten symbol depict double-headed serpents connected back-to-back, facing opposite directions of left and right.

In the first example provided, we see Aztec symbolism showing the same “joined” twin serpent motif or double-headed serpent motif. Interestingly, we see essentially the same symbolism in Egypt, where a giant solar Aten symbol (which I believe signifies the soul/source) crowns the middle between the serpents.

The Egyptians and Maya both created art and architecture depicting human beings transforming into, or having transformed into, felines. For the Egyptians, the feline was the lion; for the Maya, the feline was the jaguar.

Side-by-side comparisons of an Egyptian sphinx (a mythical creature with the head of a human and the body of a lion) with what Mesoamerican scholars describe as the “were-jaguar” (as in “werewolf”) reveal many commonalities. The term “were-jaguar” is derived from Old English were, meaning “man”, and jaguar, a large member of the cat family prevalent across Mesoamerica.

What exactly did this feline transformation theme on opposite sides of the Atlantic mean?

Researchers and philosophers have sought to decipher the meaning of the mysterious and colossal Sphinx statue that was buried in the desert sands for centuries before it was dug up and polished off in the early 1800s. Most contemporary Egyptologists, like Dr. Mark Lehner and Dr. Zahi Hawass, believe that the Sphinx was carved out of an outcropping during the reign of King Khafre, c. 2500 BCE; but many writers and archaeologists in past centuries, such as R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, a nineteenth century French Egyptologist, occultist, and student of sacred geometry, believed the Sphinx to be the relic of an earlier epoch in world history, an extremely sophisticated and advanced lost civilisation (perhaps “Atlantis”) in remote antiquity.

Even today, there are many who do not agree with consensus estimates for the age of the Sphinx. The late rogue Egyptologist John Anthony West (1932 – 2018), taking a page from Schwaller de Lubicz, pointed to water erosion on the sphinx statue and the Sphinx enclosure wall as evidence of the monument’s vast antiquity.

It is well-known that sphinxes have been found among many ancient civilisations, not just the Egyptians and Maya. These civilisations include cultures in India, Phoenicia, Syria, China, Greece, Thailand, Japan, Sumer, and Sri Lanka. Egyptologists don’t yet seem to have “cracked the code” of the Sphinx, as they have not given any clear and decisive definition explaining exactly what the hidden meaning is behind this massive statue. This hidden meaning seems to be embodied not just in the Great Sphinx, but also in countless smaller sphinx statues depicting Egyptian kings and pharaohs in lionised form:

Shown here are three Egyptian kings depicted as sphinxes, converted into felines. Left: The Sphinx of Taharqo, a Nubian king ruling the Kingdom of Kush (Photo Courtesy of the British Museum). Middle: Great sphinx bearing the names of Amenemhat II (12th Dynasty), Merneptah (19th Dynasty) and Shoshenq I (22nd Dynasty). Right: Pharaoh Amenemhat III in the shape of a Sphinx.

When asked to explain the symbolic meaning of the sphinx, mainstream Egyptologists associate the sphinx with general concepts like “royalty” and the “monarchy” and with qualities of “majesty” and “nobility” and so on. But these descriptions do not answer the fundamental question, namely, why convert a human being (a king) into a lion? What does this human-into-feline symbolism mean? Just as Egypt’s pharaohs were depicted as lions, Mesoamerican (Olmec, Maya, Aztec) kings and rulers were depicted as jaguars. We can see this in the following examples:

Just like the Egyptians, the Maya and Olmec depicted themselves as felines (jaguars) in their art and architecture as evident in these figurines, which are typical of Mayan and Olmec iconography.

Dr. Nicholas Saunders, Senior Lecturer, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, School of Arts, University of Bristol, explains:

“The jaguar is America’s largest and most powerful cat, and for more than three thousand years it has been Mexico’s most enduring symbolic animal. The jaguar’s image…prowls the art of most ancient Mexican civilizations, from the Olmec to the Aztec…the jaguar was identified with sorcery and magic, and regarded as the spirit-helper of shamans and sorcerers, as well as the most dazzling symbol of priests and kings…In pre-Columbian times, before the Spanish arrived, animal and human features were often combined to create what we regard as fantastical creatures possessing supernatural strength and magical powers. No surprise then that the kings and rulers of the Aztecs, the Maya, and earlier civilizations adorned themselves with jaguar skins, skulls, fangs and claws. Carvings, paintings or statues of humans wearing jaguar clothing or appearing to be half-human, half-jaguar, are more than simple artistic images – they represent fundamental ideas and beliefs of the Aztecs and their predecessors……Among the Classic Maya (AD 250-800), the jaguar’s brilliantly-coloured pelt was used as royal clothing for dynastic warrior-kings, and as a covering for royal thrones – some of which were carved in the shape of a feline, as at the Maya cities of Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichén-Itzá……Classic Maya rulers believed that using the jaguar’s name gave them prestige, and so there are examples where it has been attached to a king’s royal title. Similarly in death, archaeological evidence from Uaxactún and Kaminaljuyu in Guatemala, and Altun Ha in Belize reveals that Maya kings were buried with the animal’s skin, claws, and fangs.”
—Dr. Nicholas Saunders, The Jaguar in Mexico.

As demonstrated above, the Egyptians, in funerary monuments and public statuary, depicted their pharaohs as transforming or having transformed into feline sphinxes. Most Egyptologists believe that the colossal Egyptian sphinx on the famous Giza Plateau outside Cairo represents the Pharaoh Khafre. In his 2006 book, Mountain of the Pharaohs, Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, wrote:

“Most scholars believe, as I do, that the Sphinx represents Khafre and forms an integral part of his pyramid complex.”
–Zahi Hawass, Mountain of the Pharaohs.

Given the fact that Egypt’s pharaohs depicted themselves as sphinxes (i.e., half man half feline creatures), what are the chances that ancient Mayan kings and rulers also depicted themselves as half man and half feline creatures? Can this be mere coincidence? Or does this parallel iconography on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean reveal some type of unexplained link between the Maya and Egyptians? How did “human-into-feline-transformation” become a cherished motif among both Maya and Egyptian kings?

4 – Parallel Third Eye Symbolism

Both the Maya and Egyptians used the same Third Eye forehead dot symbolism. On the left, we see a relief from the Nunnery at Uxmal, Mexico, showing a circular dot in the location of the forehead. In India, this forehead dot is called “bindi” and it signifies the Third Eye chakra. On the right, examples from Egyptian tombs and steles show a similar “third eye forehead dot.”

For almost two decades, I’ve been pointing to the presence of Third Eye symbolism across the ancient world because I believe that the ancient art of “awakening the Third Eye” was a kind of universal religion that flourished in Antiquity, as-yet unrecognised by scholars.

There is ancient evidence of the Third Eye in Hinduism, where the Third Eye is symbolized by a dot on the forehead above and between the two eyes. This Third Eye dot, called “bindi” / “bindu,” “urna” and “trinetra,” is visible on images of the Buddha, gods, and bodhisattvas.

Is it possible that this same Third Eye symbol was known among ancient cultures outside Asia? I believe the answer is yes.

On the left, we see two so-called “Chac” masks encoded in Mayan architecture. They are stacked on top of each other, and each mask wears a giant circular stone on the forehead. The stone is in the same position as the Hindu “bindi dot,” which in India symbolises the Third Eye, a state of awakening and enlightenment.

On the right, in Egypt, the solar “aten” symbol crowns the forehead. In my opinion, the aten is a symbol of the soul / source. Shown here in the position of the Third Eye, the message is clear. According to ancient Hindu tradition, the act of awakening the Third Eye means awakening the eye of the soul and seeing the soul or source within.

Ancient civilisations in the Americas, like the Maya and Aztecs (left), used the same forehead dot symbolism as Eastern cultures (right). Left: Head of a “rain god” (as described by scholars), with Third Eye “forehead dot,” found at Chichen Itza, Mexico. Right: Buddha image shown with bindi Third Eye “forehead dot,” typical of Asian statues.

Incredibly, and despite the fact that few scholars are willing to seriously entertain such a notion, the ancient Third Eye tradition of the Eastern hemisphere seems to have been a major cultural force in the Western hemisphere. As I explained in Written in Stone, we find a very Asian-like pattern of Third Eye symbolism among cultures that evolved and flourished in present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, Panama, Costa Rica and even the United States. These cultures include the Olmec, Toltec, Maya, Zapotec, Aztec, Inca, pre-Inca, and Mississippian cultures. For an overview of my research into the Third Eye among the ancient Egyptians, please read my article “Third Eye in Ancient Egypt”.

3 – Parallel “Back-to-Back” Lions/Jaguars

Left: Twin jaguars enmeshed as one, depicted in front of the Governor’s Palace at Uxmal, Mexico. Right: The Egyptian Aker Lions glyph, depicted on the Egyptian papyrus of Ani (Photo Courtesy of the British Museum).

The Maya and Egyptians both used the same “back-to-back” jaguars (Maya) and lions (Egyptians) motif. On the left, we see a statue in front of the Governor’s Palace at Uxmal, Mexico, depicting twin Mayan jaguars back-to-back. On the right, in the comparative image above, is a famous Egyptian “hieroglyph” or “god” or “motif” called Aker, depicting back-to-back twin lions.

“Aker appears as a pair of twin lions, one named Duaj (meaning “yesterday”) and the other Sefer (meaning “tomorrow”)…When depicted as a lion pair…a sun disc was put between the lions; the lions were sitting back-on-back.”
—Pat Remler, Egyptian Mythology, A to Z.

A famous explanation of the Aker Lions was provided by Schwaller de Lubicz, a student of Egyptian symbolism best known for his twelve-year study of the Temple of Luxor, who wrote that the image represents the “present” moment in time (symbolised by the solar Aten symbol) in comparison to the “past” and “future” (symbolised by the twin lions).

Schwaller de Lubicz indicated that the lion on the left corresponds to “yesterday” and faces west, while the lion on the right faces east and represents “tomorrow.” With the eternal sundisk (which I believe symbolises the “soul within” or “higher Self”) centred between the dual opposing lions, de Lubicz hypothesised that the entire Aker Lions hieroglyph seems to signify the “Eternal Now” moment.

The idea of an “eternal present” moment or the “eternal now” moment is a central concept in Eastern spiritual teachings and occult philosophy. It goes by the name “non-duality,” and we find it in Advaita Vedanta, Ch’an Buddhism, Zen, Taoism and Sufism.

“The Asian idea of nondualism developed in the Vedic and post-Vedic Hindu philosophies, as well as in the Buddhist traditions.”
—Sanghamitra Dasgupta and Dilip Kumar Mohanta, Indian Philosophical Quarterly # 25.

There is a symbol in Mayan art and iconography that is similar to the Egyptian Aker Lions hieroglyph. This Mesoamerican counterpart depicts the image of twin jaguars and twin jaguar-like humans. Like the Aker lions in Egypt, the Mesoamerican jaguars are facing opposite directions, which, in my opinion, indicates that they symbolise duality. In some cases, not only are the jaguars lying back-to-back (close together and facing opposite directions) just like in Egypt, but they are also lying in such a way that their physical bodies are enmeshed. This gives the impression that their duality has been united, and they have combined into a single being—a double-headed jaguar.

Below are three examples from Mayan art compared with Egypt’s Aker lions:

Top left column: Maya statue depicting twin jaguars back-to-back in front of the Governor’s palace at Uxmal, Mexico glyphs. Middle Left Column: Twin jaguars shown back-to-back on the Nunnery at Uxmal, Mexico. Bottom left column: Twin sphinx-like humans shown back-to-back depicted on the Pyramid of the Magicians at Uxmal, Mexico. Right column: Egyptian Aker Lions glyphs from Egyptian papyri.

Did this “twin jaguar” symbol have the same meaning among the Maya as the Aker Lions symbol among the Egyptians?

Based on this symbolism, one could argue that Egypt’s Aker Lions symbol signifies the unification of opposites into the centre principle, the Aten or sundisk, which I believe symbolises the soul. In my book, Mayan Masonry, I present detailed evidence for the notion that in Mexico, the twin jaguar motif symbolises the unification of opposites into a kind of centre principle, where the two jaguars become a single and more powerful entity. This reflects a deep, metaphysical wisdom teaching that explains the concept of nonduality.

2 – Parallel Tau Cross

Le Plongeon found an even more amazing similarity that ties the Egyptian and Maya cultures to each other, and to Freemasonry. In his book, Sacred Mysteries Among the Mayas and the Quiches, Le Plongeon expressed his belief that the Egyptians and Maya used the very same Tau cross in a way that made him believe it had the same meaning in both Egypt and Mexico.

The Tau was a symbol used by ancient cultures in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Egypt, and Mexico (see image below). Its use by the Egyptians and Maya fascinated Le Plongeon.

How did both cultures, separated by the Atlantic Ocean, come to adapt the same Tau cross for thousands of years?

The Tau cross is also a very important Masonic symbol, appearing on Masonic tracing boards, aprons, jewellery, and more:

Left: Tau Cross that once stood on Roughan Hill, Ireland, now in the Clare Museum. Middle: Talaiot de Trepuco, megalithic Tau-shaped Taula monument on Menorca island, Spain. Right: The so-called “Triple Tau” is described in Freemasonry as the “Grand Emblem of Royal Arch Masonry.”

As a Freemason, Le Plongeon certainly knew the importance of the Tau. He felt that the only way the Egyptians and Maya could have both possessed the Tau was via the same source. For Le Plongeon, this meant that both civilisations somehow had access to the same teachings:

“the “Crux Ansata,” …”‘symbol of symbols” among the Egyptians…It was placed on the breast of the deceased, sometimes as a simple T …sometimes represented as supported on a heart. It is also seen adorning the breasts of statues and statuettes in Palenque, Copan, and other ancient cities of Guatemala, Nicaragua, and various localities of Central America…
The origin and meaning of the mystical T, that symbol of “hidden wisdom” as it has been denominated by scholars of our days, found on all Egyptian monuments, in the temples, in the hands of the gods, in the tombs on the breast of the mummies, also met with in the ancient edifices of Maya and on the statues and altars in the temples of Palenque.”13
—Augustus Le Plongeon, Sacred MysteriesAmong the Mayas and the Quiches.

For the Maya and Egyptians, the Tau was no insignificant object. They used it in their art, architecture, funeral rituals, ceremonies, on their altars and thrones, in their jewellery, and they depicted themselves and their gods holding the symbol on statues and reliefs, as shown in the images above.

More commonly known in Egypt as the “ankh,” the T cross is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic ideograph symbolising “life” in the sense of the “eternal life” or spiritual life of the soul. The ankh has a loop handle, partly disguising the T and Tau cross. However, the Egyptian ankh is no less a letter T than the Maya T cross. We should keep in mind that its Latin name, crux ansata, means “cross with a handle.”

In 1994, the uncovering of T-shaped stone pillars among the world’s oldest dated megaliths at the famous archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe provided stunning confirmation that the Tau cross played a major role among the most ancient civilisations around the world.

Tau-shaped “T” pillars at the ancient site of Gobekli Tepe, depicting human arms and hands shown in relief.

Interestingly, Göbekli Tepe’s T-shaped pillars are giant abstract images of the human form. Arms and hands are visible on the megaliths, as if uniting the T with the human body, as shown in the image above:

“The characteristic element of Göbekli Tepe’s architecture are the T-shaped pillars. In the older Layer III (10th millennium BCE) the monolithic pillars weigh tons and reach heights between 4 m (pillars in the stone circles) and 5.5 m (central pillars). The T-shape of the pillars is clearly an abstract depiction of the human body seen from the side. Evidence for this interpretation are the low relief depictions of arms, hands and items of clothing like belts and loincloths on some of the pillars.”
—Oliver Dietrich, The Tepe Telegrams.

Incredibly, the Egyptian Tau cross was sometimes personified—depicted with arms and legs.

Left: The Egyptian Tau Cross was often shown personified; here it is depicted with arms on an ancient Egyptian wall frieze at the Temple of Sobek and Haroeris, Kom-Ombo. Right: The T-shaped pillars of Göbekli Tepe—which I believe symbolise the Tau Cross—are shown in human form.

That Gobekli Tepe’s T-shaped pillars and ancient Egypt’s Tau cross were both anthropomorphised provides compelling evidence of a possible, even likely, connection between the two cultures. This powerful cross symbol has, of course, been appropriated by Christianity.

I researched the ruins of Triptych Temples all over the ancient world—and most pronouncedly among the pyramid cultures—in the late 1990s, and, as demonstrated in my 2011 book Written in Stone, these temples all celebrate the same universal religion (Perennial Philosophy) of non-duality that was shared across all of antiquity.

The pyramid-cultures all built “Triptych” three-door temples, with a wider and taller middle door than the two flanking it. The abundant occurrence of the Triptych across the ancient world is not a random coincidence. The Triptych represents more than merely an architectural element; the Triptych is the chief symbol of an advanced universal religion (perennial philosophy) that was once shared globally in antiquity, mainly by the pyramid cultures.

In my books, I have shown how the twin outer doors of Triptych Temples symbolise duality, or the “pairs of opposites”; the centre door symbolises the unity of the twin outer doors or the “balance of duality” (i.e., non-duality).

Egyptologists and Mayanists recognise that the concept of non-duality (also called the “balance of opposites”) formed an essential feature of core wisdom-teaching among the ancient Egyptians and the Maya:

Left: Temple of the Turtles, Uxmal, Mexico. Right: Temple of Seti II in the atrium of the temple of Karnak, Egypt.

“…the deeply rooted Egyptian tendency [is] to understand the world…as a series of pairs of contrasts balanced in unchanging equilibrium…The dualistic forms…embody the…Egyptian thought that a totality comprises opposites.”
— Henri Frankfort, Kinship and the Gods, 1948.
“…the basic concept of the Maya religion and that of Mesoamerica in general is the harmony of opposites…”
— Mercedes de la Garza, Maya, 1998

The discovery of the Triptych provides evidence that ancient cultures worldwide shared the same spiritual beliefs, and that they encoded their beliefs in the parallel Triptych Temples that they designed and built. This discovery suggests that these cultures descended from the same remote parent source.

The ancient Mayan and Egyptian cultures do not seem to have been in contact with one another. There are no records of trade or warfare or any other types of trans-Atlantic communication. What’s more, there are many differences between the two cultures that are just as powerful as their similarities. For example, the Mayan ball game was a central feature of their culture; I have never heard of any Egyptian ball games. Also, the art of mummification does not seem to have played a key role in the Maya funerary ritual, as it did in Egypt.

To compare the two civilisations is at first blush manifestly unfair to the Maya, who were denied their say in history by both their isolation from the rest of the civilised world and because of the intentional destruction of the lion’s share of their cultural patrimony by the Spanish conquistadors. We will most likely never be able to read about the great exploits of the Maya counterparts, if such ever existed, to those of Cleopatra, King Tut, Rameses and Akhenaten.

Nonetheless, there is ample reason to believe, based on the striking parallel iconography and cultural phenomena I have presented here and elsewhere, that both civilisations evolved from the same more ancient parent culture or source civilisation—a mother culture so old that it has now been lost to time. Both cultures seem to have somehow shared the same religious tradition—as if they started off with the same body of metaphysical wisdom, albeit expressing this wisdom in slightly different ways, using their own “local dialect” in a sense. This is the theory that I put forth in my 2011 book, Written in Stone, and further flesh out in Mayan Masonry, where I look at several more profound Mayan and Egyptian parallels, as well as a panoply of other remarkable parallels shared by the Maya and other ancient civilisations.

Is it possible that these civilisations may be children of the same Mother Culture? Could they have descended from the same more ancient source without knowledge of each other? I think the astonishing answer may well be yes! As to what that Mother Culture was, and how it spread its tentacles throughout the ancient world, we don’t have all the answers yet. Despite some intriguing recent finds and reinterpretations of ancient artefacts, the source of ancient religious belief remains elusive in many respects; but I’m still digging and still sorting through a continuously-updated database of archaeological information. Watch this space!

About the author

Richard Cassaro is a Madrid-based author, lecturer, documentary filmmaker, and tour guide from New York City. His published books Written in Stone (2011), The Missing Link (2016), and Mayan Masonry (2018) offer rare insights into ancient megaliths, spirituality, mythology, magic, symbolism, secret societies, comparative religion and occult archaeology. Cassaro has discussed his work on the History Channel, and in documentary films including Magical Egypt 2. His articles have appeared in print journals and web media around the globe; and he has delivered well-received lectures about his findings in England, Italy, Peru, Egypt, Spain, Mexico, Cyprus, and the U.S. In his capacity as a field investigator, he hosts travel adventures to archaeological sites worldwide.

A series of mysterious and uncanny architectural, artistic, and religious parallels connect the ancient Maya and Egyptian civilisations. Some of these parallels have been noted and proclaimed by nineteenth century scholars; others have been discovered in the past several decades. Over the past...

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On June 30th, 1974, Alberta Williams King was gunned down while she played the organ for the “Lord’s Prayer” at Ebenezer Baptist Church. As a Christian civil rights activist, she was assassinated…just like her son, Martin Luther King, Jr. But most people remember only one. Until a month ago, I was one of those people.

When a friend told me about Alberta Williams King, my first reaction was “who?” This question was followed by a wave of shame. It was the same feeling I had a few years ago when I first heard about Fannie Lou Hamer. Then later came Ida B. Wells and other leaders who seemed to appear in the discussion of American history to my confused, uninformed silence. I started to suspect that I had half an education and that I had been leaving out the role of women and feminism in Black History.
I thought I was fairly well-versed in African-American history. My parents filled our shelves with the core curriculum: Up From Slavery, Letters from a Birmingham Jail, Native Son, Black Boy, Go Tell it On the Mountain, Soul on Ice, The Miseducation of the Negro, Before Columbus, and many more pieces of literature and non-fiction. I immersed myself in books, hagiography, essays, videos, encyclopedias. My extracurricular studies came from an authentic curiosity (instead of dutiful obligation) to know more about my family. Black females held the role of poetry and song: Phillis Wheatley, Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Sapphire. But as far as activism and leadership, the ranks were all-male.
“Well, we don’t study it that much because there’s no such thing.” As South Florida child attending privileged white schools, I heard this answer a lot in response to request for getting more out of February. Usually I was the only black face in the honors classes and would be the lone petitioner. By the time I was in middle school, the atmospheric ignorance didn’t invoke anger in me. Instead I became curious as to who else did not “have a history.”
The answer was anything not in Europe or the Mideast. When my teachers lectured about Mideast history, they had to mentally sever Egypt, Libya, and most of the region from the African continent just to keep the Eurocentric/Mediterranean conceit in tact. But none of this surprised me. Most of my white peers reached a consensus that African-Americans didn’t really have a history before slavery (or the arrival of Europeans) and not much to talk about after the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The only subcategory with an even smaller claim to historical significance were Black women. And while a fierce argument would rage in defense of the need for black history, most were willing to concede the importance of that history’s feminism.
Now this isn’t meant to be a diatribe against my teachers, family, or community. I’m grateful for their lessons on African-American men who made black history. But after hearing about Alberta Williams King last month having no idea of who she was, I began to wonder how many transformational stories I had been missing. With the exception of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, I had neglected one half of my story.

Even now, as the nation’s attention focuses on the new generation of activists fighting against police brutality and hate crimes, it’s women who are often left out. The silence has subtle but lasting consequences. Historical omission points toward a culture’s subconscious beliefs that some people matter less than others. When female stories are muted, we are teaching our kids that their dignity is second class and the historical accounts of their lives are less relevant. This lowered value carries over when women face sexual objectification and systemic brutalization from inside and outside the community. When we can’t see ourselves in our history, we begin to think that we are disconnected and suffering alone. Historical ignorance always precedes cultural imbalances and individual despair. Too many lives are still lived in the blank space, too many march for racial equality while subjugating their gender and even sexual orientation.
The wave of inter- and intra-community violence against women and African American LGBT citizens is not an accident. It may seem like nit-picking to talk about the lack of non-heteronormative stories during Black History Month. But historical exclusivity often has a way of turning into present and institutionalized tragedy. Whose story gets told matters.
As an adult, I’m trying to make up for lost time. By getting to know Wells’ work in highlighting lynchings, Mrs. King’s behind-the-scenes leadership, Fannie Lou Hamer’s activism in Mississippi to get people registered to vote, and many other women whose stories must be told to our children when they are young so that they become a part of the accepted mainstream of black History.Lead photo, from left: Martin Luther King, Sr., Alberta Williams King, Coretta Scott King, and Christine Farris, Dr. King’s sister.
Aurin Squire is a freelance journalist who lives in New York City. In addition to being a playwriting fellow at The Juilliard School, he has writing commissions and residencies at the Dramatists Guild of America, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and National Black Theatre.

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For many years Black historians and Afrocentrists have said that the first inhabitants of China were black Africans.
The Negroid races peopled at some time all the South of India, Indo-China and China. The South of Indo-China actually has now pure Negritos as the Semangs and mixed as the Malays and the Sakais.”
( H. Imbert, “Les Negritos de la Chine”).
“Even the sacred Manchu dynasty shows this Negro strain. The lower part of the face of the Emperor Pu-yi of Manchukuo, direct descendant of the Manchu rulers of China, is most distinctly Negroid. Chinese chroniclers report that a Negro Empire existed in the South of China at the dawn of that country’s history.
( Professor Chang Hsing-Lang , “The importation of Negro Slaves to China under the Tang Dynasty A.D. 618-907)
“There is evidence of substantial populations of Blacks in early China. Archaeological studies have located a black substratum in the earliest periods of Chinese history, and reports of major kingdom ruled by Blacks are frequently in Chinese documents.”
(Kwang-Chih Chang, The Archaeology of Ancient China, (Yale University Press) and Irwin Graham, Africans Abroad (Columbia University Press).
But after hundreds of years of the worldwide spread of the doctrine of white superiority and the inferiority of black Africans and their descendants. This notion was poo, pooed by white scientists and others and even by some blacks.
But in 2005, a Chinese DNA specialist, Jin Li, leading a team of Chinese and other scientists, proved through DNA tests that indeed the first inhabitants of China were black Africans.
Li said he was trying to prove that the Chinese evolved from homo erectus independently of all other humans. He collected DNA samples from 165 different ethnic groups and over 12000 samples in China and Asia to test his theory.
Li said he was taught through China’s education system that there was something special about Chinese. And because he was Chinese, he was hoping to prove that the Chinese developed independently of all other humans.
But surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise!
Li’s team focused on a single genetic marker that appeared about 80,000 years ago in Africa. Anyone carrying that marker would have recent African ancestors and could not be descended from the more ancient Homo Erectus.
Li and his team found that early humans belonged to different species but modern humans descended from the East Africans species.
Li Hui, a scientist on Li’s team, said, that 100,000 years ago groups of humans started leaving Africa moving through South and Southeast Asia into China, and that 65 branches of the Chinese groups studied carry similar DNA mutations as the people of Southeast Asia.
Jin Li said “we did not see even one single individual that could be considered as a descendant of the homo erectus in China, rather, everybody was a descendant of our ancestors from Africa.”
Li was asked how he as a Chinese felt about what he found.
He said “after I saw the evidence generated in my laboratory. I think we should all be happy with that. Because after all, modern humans from different parts of the world are not so different from each other and we are very close relatives.” (Amen Brother!)
Li’s team was composed of an international group of scientist from China, Russia, India, Brazil and other nations. This was a 5 year project to study the geographic and genealogical routes tracing the spread and settlements of ancient and modern humans.
Now I know there are still many people and probably some of you reading this hub who would be horrified, upset, disgusted, in disbelief etc, etc, if you found that you had any genetic connection to a black person.
And I can feel your pain, because at one time in American history, as a result of all of the negative racial propaganda published about blacks to justify slavery for 400 years.
Many black people didn’t want to be black either.
Right up until the civil rights movement, the “I’m black and I’m proud” and the “Black Is Beautiful” movements.
Many black Americans were happy to tout that they were part Indian. part white or part any other ethnic group other than just being only black.
Many black men and women straighten their hair and used skin lighting creams to make themselves look more white than black.
This is understandable, because all of the movies stars and other esteemed images of Americans were white and mostly all of the images of black Americans were ugly, buffoonish and how shall we say it, aesthetically not pleasing.
But the DNA is the DNA and that shows that all modern human orginated in some part of the African continent.
Believe It Or Not
Or read em and weep
“If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it’s solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive, then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges.” Richard Leaky, Paleoanthropologist

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Sidney Gottlieb. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photo: AP)MK-Ultra was the code name for a notorious government mind control program conducted in the 1950s and 1960s in which the CIA directed scientists to dose unsuspecting human guinea pigs with LSD and other drugs. The program was recently back in the news when a juror in the case of one of those guinea pigs — the late Boston mobster Whitey Bulger, whom the CIA had injected with LSD when he was a young prison inmate — said she wouldn’t have voted to convict him of 11 murders had she known what the U.S. government had done to him.Bulger, who was given LSD over 50 times, would go on to terrorize South Boston as the notoriously violent leader of the Winter Hill Gang.
In a new episode of “Buried Treasure,” a regular feature of the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery,” Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman interview historian and journalist Stephen Kinzer, the author of the new book “Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.” It’s a biography of the man behind MK-Ultra, a chemist named Sidney Gottlieb, who also devised poisons the agency used to try to assassinate foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview.

Yahoo News: Let’s just start out by telling our listeners about Sidney Gottlieb. Who was he?
Stephen Kinzer: I’ve devoted a lot of my career to try to find out what happens behind the facade of public politics and public diplomacy that we can see. I’ve discovered a lot of things in the course of that research. ... This is the first time I’ve been shocked. I still can’t believe that this happened, that there was such a thing as MK-Ultra and that there was such a person as Sidney Gottlieb. He lived in total invisibility. So in a sense, my book is the biography of a man who wasn’t there.You approached a former director of the CIA, who professed not to know who Sidney Gottlieb was.
Gottlieb has faded away almost entirely, and that was his desire. He was conducting the most extreme experiments on human beings that have ever been conducted by any agency or officer of the U.S. government. He had what was, in effect, a license to kill. ... Gottlieb was probably the most powerful unknown American of the 20th century.Is it possible that one reason Sidney Gottlieb has escaped attention is because the CIA never confronted ... the awful things he was doing?
They ultimately have said, essentially, that Gottlieb was some kind of wacko. He was not supervised well, things got off the rails, the project got out of control, there were problems with supervision. ... It was all Sidney’s fault. This is a way of eliminating all institutional responsibility on the part of the CIA.How did he fit in at the CIA?
Sidney Gottlieb joined the CIA in its early years, in 1951. ... Almost all of the senior officers of the CIA came from a particular social class. They were silver spoon products of the American aristocracy, who knew each other from prep school, and the same colleges, and investment banks, and law firms. Sidney Gottlieb was completely different ... from the rest of them. He was the son of Jewish immigrants. He grew up in the Bronx. He stuttered. He had a limp. So he was very much of an outsider. ... [Agency officials] knew that what he was doing was brutal, was bloody, and was causing an unknown number of deaths. They didn’t want to put somebody from their own social class in the position of having to oversee this project that they knew was very horrific. What Sidney Gottlieb was running was a covert program aimed at mind control [and] experimenting with LSD on some of the most vulnerable Americans with no consent at all.
The idea behind MK-Ultra was to find a substance that would allow the CIA to control people’s minds and manipulate them and make them do things that they would never otherwise do. And then, if you were lucky, just forget that they had ever done them. … [Gottlieb] decided that before you could find a way to insert a new mind into somebody’s brain, you first had to find a way to blast away the mind that was in there.
... He used every kind of drug combination he could imagine, plus sensory deprivation, hypnosis, electroshock and all kinds of other techniques, all aimed at trying to find a way to destroy a human mind. ... Behind him, he left a trail of wounded and dead in numbers that nobody can even estimate because records were all destroyed as Gottlieb left the CIA.

Gottlieb, left, a former CIA scientific chief, talks with his attorney, Terry Lenzner, before testifying to a Senate health subcommittee on Sept. 21, 1977. (AP)So this was a Cold War program started in the early 1950s. And like much else from the Cold War era, it arose out of fears that the Soviets and international communism were doing something like this, and therefore we couldn’t have a mind control gap, as it were. What do we know about what the Soviets were up to and what U.S. intelligence thought the Soviets were up to?
Now those are two very different things: what the Soviets were doing and what we thought the Soviets were doing. So I asked myself the same question. ... What led the early directors of the CIA, and in particular, Allen Dulles, and then the person he hired to run this MK-Ultra project, Sidney Gottlieb, to believe that there was such a thing as mind control? In the end, after 10 years, Sidney Gottlieb finally concluded that there is no such thing as mind control. ... But what made them think that it was possible? ... I think it has to do with the cultural conditioning with which they were brought up. Think of all the books, and the stories, and the movies, about mind control. ... There are Edgar Allan Poe stories, and Sherlock Holmes stories, and movies like “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and “Gaslight.” Those guys grew up watching those movies, and reading those stories, and I think they believed that since fiction could imagine it, there probably was an element of truth to it. That also fed their desire to plunge into this project.There was “The Manchurian Candidate,” a novel and then a movie, that came out in the early 1960s, which was about Korean mind control programming an American to assassinate a presidential candidate. And ironically, it was the book “The Search for the Manchurian Candidate,” by John Marks, in the 1970s, that I believe first revealed the existence of MK-Ultra?
You’re right. When Sidney Gottlieb left the CIA in 1973, along with his longtime mentor, Richard Helms, who was at that time the director of the CIA, the two of them sat down and quickly decided that all the files from MK-Ultra should be destroyed. Gottlieb actually had to go out to the CIA records center in Wharton, Va., and oversee the destruction of seven crates of documents. ... A priceless archive was lost.
Later on, in the mid-1970s, this researcher, John Marks, decided to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA, asking if there were any other documents. ... This request landed at a time when the CIA was under orders from a new president, Jimmy Carter, to open up and be more honest. … [A] search turned up ... a set of records that listed expense accounts for many of the people involved in MK-Ultra. From those records, we have been able to develop an idea of what were these 149 sub-projects. ... “The Search for the Manchurian Candidate” is the foundation for later research that has deepened our understanding of this project.The CIA and Sidney Gottlieb’s experiments using LSD on unsuspecting people, in a way, that seeped in and helped ... is it overstated to say helped create the counterculture in the 1960s, particularly in San Francisco? [Were] people like Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey ... experimenting and using LSD because of this program?
Sidney Gottlieb was fascinated by LSD. It was a newly discovered drug. It had only been discovered in the 1940s. It was colorless, odorless, and had amazing effects in very small quantities. Gottlieb himself used LSD, by his own estimate, at least 200 times.
He and the people around him began to feel that perhaps this drug could be what one of them called “the key that could unlock the universe.” In other words, it might be the answer to what’s the substance that can open up people’s minds to outside control? So in 1953, Gottlieb persuaded the CIA to buy the entire world supply of LSD. It was then being manufactured ... by one company in Switzerland, the Sandoz company. All of that LSD came to the United States, and came to the CIA. Gottlieb used it for two kinds of experiments. Some were horrifically brutal, carried out in prisons in the United States and in safe houses around Europe and East Asia. Many people were fed overdoses without being told what they were being given.
... One experiment at the federal prison in Lexington, Ky. ... Seven African-American inmates were given triple doses of LSD every day for 77 days while locked in a padded room. So if the object of that experiment was to find out whether such an overdose could destroy a human mind. The answer is obviously yes.
... [But] who were among the first people who signed up to take LSD in those benign LSD experiments? Well, one of them was Ken Kesey, who went on to write “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” that became a great bible of the counterculture. Another was the poet Allen Ginsberg, who listened to “Tristan and Isolde” on his headphones while taking LSD. Another was Robert Hunter, the lyricist for the Grateful Dead. These guys all took LSD home with them. They turned on all their friends. This is how the Grateful Dead got its LSD.It sounds like we have a lot to be thankful to Sidney Gottlieb for…
Later in life, all these people came to realize that their LSD had come from the CIA. I found an interview with John Lennon in which he was asked about LSD, and he said, “We must always remember to thank the CIA.” ... And of course, the irony is ... the drug that Gottlieb hoped would give the CIA the tool to control people’s minds actually wound up fueling a generational rebellion that was aimed at destroying everything the CIA believed in.One of the most fascinating stories from your book is that of Whitey Bulger. Tell us how he became a subject of MK-Ultra.
Whitey Bulger fits very much into the category that I was just discussing. So under Gottlieb’s supervision, a number of federal prisons began experiments with LSD using inmates. And, of course, that’s an ideal population because those people are totally dependent on the prison doctor and the prison warden.
During the mid-1950s when MK-Ultra was at its peak, Whitey Bulger, the famous Boston gangster, was in prison as a truck hijacker in Atlanta, Ga. He was approached by the prison doctor, who told him that the prison was going to be participating in a major project aimed at finding a cure for schizophrenia. And if Bulger would agree to take a certain drug that they were investigating, he might have some considerations [such as] shorter time in prison and better conditions.
So he was given LSD for months, at least 50 times, without being told what it was. He later wrote what a nightmarish experience this was and how ... for his whole life, he never recovered from it. Years later, when he found out that this doctor was actually working on a CIA project and not trying to cure schizophrenia, he told other members of his gang, “I’m going back to Atlanta. I’m going to find that guy, and I’m going to kill him.”
He didn’t find that doctor, who died of apparently natural causes soon thereafter, but definitely Bulger is interesting because he’s one of the few MK-Ultra subjects who later came out and explained what had happened to him.Gottlieb was involved in another very high priority operation of the CIA’s in the 1960s and that was the plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. Tell us that story.
MK-Ultra didn’t have a firm ending, but it kind of petered out towards end of the late ’50s and into the early ’60s. Gottlieb, as I said earlier, had come to realize ... these drugs like LSD were too unreliable to be used as tools for mind control. ... But then Gottlieb went on to a completely new phase in his career. He was the CIA’s chief chemist. So when President Eisenhower ordered the assassination of Fidel Castro in the summer of 1960 and the CIA decided to use poison, it was quite logical that Sidney Gottlieb would get the assignment. He knew more about poisons than anyone in the CIA, anyone in the United States, and I’m going to guess more than anybody in the world. He was obsessed with finding all sorts of natural poisons, and he was getting the gallbladders of crocodiles from Africa and poison barks from Southeast Asia and shrubs from Central America. Anything that could be seen as poison he assembled.
So it was Gottlieb who concocted all the poisons that were intended to kill Fidel Castro. One that was supposed to make his beard fall out, and one that would make him seem disoriented in public, but also ones that were supposed to be fatal. It was Gottlieb who made the L-pills — I learned a whole new vocabulary while writing this book— that means lethal. Those other fatal pills, when you drop it into someone’s tea they die. Gottlieb made those, and they were delivered to Cuba for use in killing Castro. Gottlieb made a poison wet suit, which was tainted with a virus inside that would eat away Castro’s skin if he put it on. Gottlieb made a poison pen with a hypodermic needle that was superthin so that if it was stuck into Castro’s thigh from behind, he wouldn’t even feel it.Is there any indication at all that Gottlieb was held accountable?
Towards the end of his life, Gottlieb was facing two different situations. One was internal, the people around him in his final years have all said that he was obviously haunted by something that he wouldn’t talk about. One person who visited him in that period said he was haunted by guilt. Uh, he was a destroyed man, if he had been Catholic, he would have gone to a monastery. So he was obviously deeply troubled, but he would never speak about it. Then another factor that added to his anxiety was that after many, many years, a couple of lawsuits seemed to be getting closer to him.What were these lawsuits?
One involved a case that stemmed from the poisoning by LSD of a young American who had met a guy with a limp in a bar in Paris and whose life was destroyed thereafter. So evidently this guy had been poisoned by Gottlieb. It took 20 years for this case to begin working its way through the judicial system. And finally, a trial date was set for the beginning of 1999. ... Just as the case was about to come to trial, Gottlieb died. The cause of death was never announced. ... I did find a few people who truly suspect that he might have killed himself to avoid having to testify, that he basically fell on his sword rather than be put in a position where he’d have to betray secrets that he had sworn to keep. Nobody knows if that’s true, but it’s a very intriguing footnote to Gottlieb’s death in 1999.

Brown University professor Stephen Kinzer in his office in Providence, R.I., on Jan. 30. (David Goldman/AP)

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Songs we would never hear! Histories we would never know! Art we would never see! Because the European had the capacity to destroy and didn’t have the moral restraint not to.— Maulana Karenga

The word ”’Maafa”’ (also known as the African Holocaust) is derived from a Swahili word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. 1)The term today collectively refers to the Pan-African discourse of the 500 hundred years of suffering of people of African heritage through Slavery, imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, rape, oppression, invasions, and exploitation.

Songs we would never hear! Histories we would never know! Art we would never see! Because the European had the capacity to destroy and didn’t have the moral restraint not to.— Maulana Karenga

The word ”’Maafa”’ (also known as the African Holocaust) is derived from a Swahili word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. 1)The term today collectively refers to the Pan-African discourse of the 500 hundred years of suffering of people of African heritage through Slavery, imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, rape, oppression, invasions, and exploitation.

The African Holocaust is a pan-African discourse on the global historical and contemporary genocide against the mental and physical health of African people. The effects of this genocide impact all areas of African life: religion, heritage, tradition, culture, agency, self-determination, marriage, identity, rites of passage, and ethics. And finally acts to marginalize Africans from their historical trauma and historical glory. This study does not seek to promote a binary or Manichean history, but moreover a lens for looking at patterns of persecution from within an authentic African centered framework. [2][3]

The African Holocaust or Maafa, is a crime against humanity and is recognized as such by scholars, who have documented the primary culpability of mainly, but not limited to, Europeans in the ongoing Holocaust against African people. [note] Slavery corrupted and stripped both the enslaved and the slave master of their humanity and dignity.

The African Holocaust has represented an existential threat to the peoplehood and agency of African people for the past 500 Years of world history. Africa is the most exploited continent in the history of humanity; more human victims have been procured from Africa than all the continents of the world combined. The consequences of this drain in human and mineral resources is one of the major factors in the global condition of African people.

However, this history would be incomplete and distorted, without also reflecting on the acquiescence; collaboration, rape, genocide, slavery, corruption, and warfare that Africans, as free agents,[4] as members of nations and native religions, have also engaged in. [5] Moreover, it would be morally reprehensible to neglect the contemporary trade in Africa and across the globe.

A GREAT TRAGEDY

The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny, and it is useless for the innocent to try by reasoning to get justice, when the oppressor intends to be unjust–Aesop’s Fables

The African Holocaust is the greatest continuing tragedy the world has ever seen. It was also the most impacting social event in the history of humanity. Not only in terms of scale but also in terms of legacy and horror. It is a Holocaust which is constantly denied, mitigated and trivialized.

The Maafa reduced humans with culture and history to a people invisible from historical contribution; mere labor units, commodities to be traded. From this Holocaust/Maafa the modern racial-social hierarchy was born which continues to govern the lives of every living human where race continues to confer (or obstruct) privilege and opportunity.

And because the African Holocaust is rarely treated as a continuous history, worthy of an ongoing discourse, the inter-relations and the agents of this Holocaust escape treatment. It makes it easy to make people see slavery, colonialism, apartheid as divorced from one another. Treating them as isolated studies, often misses the pattern of white supremacy throughout African history.

And in the 21st century the legacy of enslavement manifest itself in the social-economic status of Africans globally. Without a doubt Africans (as well as Native Americans and Australians) globally constitute the most oppressed, most exploited, most downtrodden people on the planet; a fact that testifies to the untreated legacy of Slavery, colonialism and apartheid. Not only is this reality in the social-economic spectrum, it is also experienced in the academic and political value the Maafa receives compared to the Jewish genocide. While African people are told to “move on from slavery”, Jewish holocaust is a staple of World history.

White Supremacy, where “truth, and norms” are issues by White establishments. Yes, they also include some African authors, but the benchmark or system of verification(like the systemic racism which operates under the cover of neutrality on sites like Wikipedia, is white. Reliability of anything is still resting with White scholarship and their politics. And this is a serious challenge to African agency and anything authentic.

In its quest for certainty, Western philosophy continues to generate what it imagines to be colorless and genderless accounts of knowledge, reality, morality, and human nature.–Alison Baile

The authentic study of Africa is often masked with political or emotional objectives; whether these objectives are Islamaphobic, anti-African, European supremacy, Afrocentric, “Black” supremacy or a Zionist agenda [2]linguistic tone which takes away the humanity of African people by referring to enslaved people as “slaves” and “black African slaves.” It reaffirms Africans as history’s slave pool;mere commodities, black bodies without history and higher destiny. This orientalism is evident in most Eurocentric studies by celebrated white historians on African and Arab slavery. But murderers don’t get off by pleading to the judge that someone else committed an equally bad murder, or that the murder was less severe because the victim’s parents handed them the knife.

On the other side, almost every single European-run historical discourse, led by the likes of John Thornton, attempts to reduce the impact, severity and legacy of the African Holocaust. Normalization white-washes slavery into:

“Everyone did it; it is part of world history.”

“Africans sold Africans to Europeans so they are just as guilty.”

“Without African involvement they could be no slave trade(Thornton)”

While Thornton may be correct, it does not absolve the continued benefits Europeans have gained and continue to gain from enslavement of African people. No other nation still inherits the wealth of their former slaves like the West. If a young girl is sold into prostitution by her own parents, the pimp must still pay for the suffering he caused the young woman. He can’t simply say, ‘Her parents made a deal with me, so you should stop the blame game.'”[3]Afrocentrics and other pro-African groups play binary blame games, while denying African culpability and agency.

Their objective is to make Africans the victims, and even when Africans are accountable for horrendous acts, they still place responsibility outside of Africa (it was the foreign religions and culture). But this neglects and tramples African agency, because it reaffirms the child-like canard of African people: incapable, and impressionable. Africans are not impressionable children who are “influenced” by everything that blows into Africa. While this argument often comes in the box of “consciousness,” in reality this attitude of “they did this to us” only reaffirms Arab and European superiority; to have so much power to control every last action Africans have ever done.

And on both sides of the debate, in an attempt to hold onto that romantic notion of self, jump through hoops to explain away reality. However, we cannot escape that Africans, as full and uninfluenced people, did engage in the African Holocaust; and are fully, although not equally, responsible for their partnering with the Atlantic and Arab slave system. Because there was no opportunity, in the early days of the trade, to suggest that Africans were tricked or bewitched into supplying Europeans (unless we are suggesting African people are a child like race) so those few that agreed to this trade in flesh were active participants.

The European controlled slave trade was not some private venture divorced from church and state. That church and state was a representation of “the people.” It represented the wealth and security of Western nations. As such the vast majority of Western Europeans and their descendants globally profited from slavery—a privilege people of European ancestry still enjoy at the expense of African development. And yet some still suggest avoiding discussing slavery as to not hurt their feelings.

While Africans and Europeans were jointly involved in the Atlantic slave trade; it was Europe that dominated the connection, vastly enlarged (from a crack to a canyon) the slave trade, and continually turned it to European advantage and African disadvantage. Basil Davidson states that within both European and African institutions there were also differences, and these differences, however “minor,” created a decisive outcome, which allowed European total domination evolving into colonialism and today’s neocolonialism.

With neocolonialism came the proxy puppet African elites who are direct ideological descendants of the African slave trading elite. But the total percentage of involvement and profits from that involvement gained by Africans engaged in selling other Africans is infinitesimal. It accounts for maybe 1% of the billable slave hours in the working life of a first generation enslaved African. It accounts for 0% of the billable hours for the many generations of Africans enslaved on European owned plantations, and the years of exploitation after emancipation. How then are we calling it a partnership of equals?

[To] see Africans as partners implies equal terms and equal influence on the global and intercontinental processes of the trade…Africans had great influence on the continent itself, but they had no direct influence on the engines behind the trade in the capital firms, the shipping and insurance companies of Europe and America, or the plantation systems in Americas. They did not wield any influence on the building manufacturing centers of the West

As unethical as it sounds, no degree of slavery in Africa would have destroyed Africa as a continental political force. It is when African talent started being exported out of Africa, that African underdevelopment from a political, economic, and social perspective became an issue. This issue of emphasis creates a peculiarity that seems unique to Africa, but all over the world, in every single conflict you will find weak or greedy members of that community who side with oppression—why is Africa any different? What is true for the African is 100% true for the Jew. So the biggest manipulation is not so much in the facts, but in the weight or emphasis of “they sold each other.” Also, most enslaved people in the West were in that state for all of their lives by European process, not African.

Those who were captured in Africa were touched by the African component briefly– and never again in the history of their enslavement. African involvement, while shameful, was hardly a partnership in Holocaust, beyond the initial capture and sale. And Europeans also have this tradition of underplaying their role in direct capture. But it is a fact that in the early days, and especially in the later (peak) days of the slave system, Europeans directly procured captives. (Bailey 2005)

The distant Arab slave trade with its states in Zanzibar have long vanished from the economic-political landscape. But the wealth of Great Britain and France continue uninterrupted. The governments, churches, businesses, royal decree, that funded and approved slavery remain unaltered.140 million Africans in the Western Hemisphere, representing around 14% of the world’s population are the visible consequences of Western Slaving and this is not only a numbers issue,

There is no escaping African culpability in the “destruction” of Africa. The failure to form unity around spheres of interest when faced with a formidable foe is a failing Africa cannot escape. Greed and corruption continues to adversely poison the hope of Africa, even today. And no degree of historical revision can wash out or dilute aspects of African partnership in the African Holocaust.

But we should also balance the exception vs. the rule vs. a phenomena. [5]as this Diaspora also represent the absolute bottom of every social-economic graph. All of this is necessary to show the backdrop to the attitudes and motives for the “new” focus on Arabs. And when we look at the principle authors of this “new” study we see the hands of people like Bernard Lewis (an ardent orientalist, and Zionist) as the prime authority even Afrocentrics are reading.

Yes, people did sell their family into slavery, yes kings did invade and use other ethnic groups for a slave pool. But it is inaccurate to highlight this as the African norm (as Dr. Akurang-Parry says). Nor should we confuse a phenomena as the natural way in which African people lived for millennium. We should not make Africa a monolith, and ignore other forms of social inequity and violence in native African communities, which predate any influence of Arabs and Europeans. Africans, like people all over the world have the same human nature, which can be both creative and loving, as well as destructive and inhumane.

But it is utterly dishonest to compare the capitalist-driven actions of Western Europeans, with the mainly duress-driven actions of a community being forced to sell their neighbors (or even their own children) into slavery for fear of the entire family being sold. To compare these circumstances as equal is moral reprehensible. What happened in Africa was a Holocaust, and victims were not limited to those being shipped across the Atlantic to European plantations or the salt marshes of Iraq— A large percentage of the trauma was experienced inside of the slaving zones.

MOVE ON FROM SLAVERY

Slavery is a painful subject for both Europeans and Africans. It is natural for any humans to try and escape one’s conscience, so Europeans often tell Africans to “Moving on” From slavery. But what does this mean and what action should Africans take to “move on” as British Prime minister Cameron insisted?:

Don’t bring it up in polite White society

Do not use it as a political tool to remind Europeans of their sordid history

Lick your wounds in private

Do not include it in your educational system

Never lobby around it for reparations

Avoid publishing books about it

Close down the African Holocaust Society Website

And do not allow your children to discuss it

This is what “Moving on from slavery and colonialism” means. Now how do we move on from the very current that is institutional racism (connected to the legacy of slavery), or White supremacy (again connected to slavery) ? How do we move Africa out of the ongoing exploitation by the West? So Moving on means to close down all debate and fracture the African connection to the past. 100% perfect for those who exploited African labor to build the Western empire, 100% perfect to avoid dealing with the current responsibility of those who profited/profit from African exploitation.

It is strange that no one tells the victims of 9/11 or the Jewish Holocaust to “move on”. So anyone who suggest Africans “move on” from the past is guilty of trying to cover up their ancestors role in our destruction. And in criminal law, to cover up a crime is a crime. To block people from accessing their historical database is a crime against their human dignity. So this is why both those who enslaved Africans, and those today who suggest we forget about slavery are partners in the African Holocaust.

STUDYING AFRICA | TYPES OF ‘TRADE’

It was once believed that the Atlantic slave trade was a largely self-contained phenomenon, it is now acknowledged that this slave trade is part of a much wider picture, which includes traditional African slave systems and the Arab slave trade. At various stages in their history conflicted and complemented each other. There was also an evolution from one type of slavering into another; as happened inside of the African slave system where captives where a casual consequence of national warfare evolved into a reason for warfare.

We must identify the different levels of enslavement in the historical narrative of Africa. Some where client-supplier, others were consequences of the overspill from internal polities clashing. Although the internal African trade became the trade which procured captives for Europeans and also Arabs, it is a distinctive trade with unique features, and moreover distinctive consequences.

Economically the growth that should have been experienced in Africa, from African human resources, was experienced in the West – as opposed to in Africa. The primary African groups involved in procurement for European interest became particularly adept and brutal at the practice of enslavement and through the centuries developed a militaristic culture. Prime groups engaged in this were Oyo, Benin, Igala, Kaabu, Fante Confederacy, Asanteman, Dahomey, the Aro Confederacy and the Imbangala professional war bands. (“Atlantic Warfare”, Thornton) One key difference between Africans as agents for Europeans, and the domestic internal slavery was the level of brutality associated with procurement. The gradual abolition of slavery in European colonial empires during the 19th century industrialization era led to the decline of these African empires.

Why do we study the past? To learn from it and set up precedents for curbing patterns which produce inequity. And to reproduce patterns and habits that produce enlightenment and progress for all of the Earth (humanity and nature). Every doctor understands why the epidemiology is critical to modern medicine; prevention and cure rest on successful analysis of the problem.

Almost every incident of conquest involves a stronger technological people subdued and exploiting a “weaker” or less developed technological people. That is the one most profound observation and pattern we can grasp from history. The consequences of that conquest have never stopped, the reverberation is heard around the global in all areas of conflict. Understanding history, as Jared Diamond states, is more often the tool used to interrupt the negative outcome, than to repeat it.Slavery is not wrong because slavery is wrong. Slavery is wrong because of another higher human consideration — human rights.

Where human rights in our modern era are intolerant to the systems of oppression slavery perpetuated. It is the immorality of slavery, the contempt for humanity that is the focus of our issue with slavery and all its enduring side effects, one being aspects of modern racism. The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics, and genocide.

So Europeans did not enslave African people with the Bible in their White hands, or notions of ideological superiority, but because they had to power, born from the technological disparity between the two groups. The collision of advanced political, and technological advancements made them appear “superior.” The Bible in the hands of a weak stone age people would have had no sway over the iron producing people of the interiors of Africa. Their Guns, Germs and Steel played the decisive role in the outcome when these two civilizations clashed.

Power protects; sell or be sold, conquer or be conquered. If one village was buying guns and you were not…bad news for you. So had Africans, like the Japanese (11) taken control of the gun manufacturing process, as opposed to exclusively buyers of guns, there would be no way Europeans could sell damp gunpowder and trinkets in exchange for African captives or African resources. But nothing has changed because this is the exact dilemma Africa faces, perceptually dependent on everyone else for final goods (Motherland 2010). And to obtain these good requires an inequitable exchange of the continent’s resources with Europe or China for trinkets. So this technological disparity, which pre-dates the arrival of Europeans, still haunts Africa’s future.

Slavery today, as slavery then, has the common theme of weak vs. strong, rich vs. poor. (It knows no exceptions) That personality has never altered and every time there is a gross imbalance it is the breeding ground for all forms of exploitation. It then seems a correct approach would be also to deal with the breeding ground of slavery. It is far more than a Black people vs. White people debate. In Cameroon the “weaker” peoples are exploited by the “stronger” people. So this pattern of oppression’s commonality needs to be addressed. Garvey clearly articulated this when he said :

Slavery is a condition imposed upon individuals or races not sufficiently able to protect or defend themselves, and so long as a race or people expose themselves to the danger of being weak, no one can tell when they will be reduced to slavery–Marcus Garvey

All humans are the same: anyone cut with a knife will bleed, anyone left without cultural identitywill fit the Willy Lynch theoretical model. The only factor in the degree of impact is culture. This is why some people experience a Holocaust and come out even stronger than they went in. A Holocaust must therefore be looked at comparatively, depending on three key factors: the heat of the fire, duration, and their cultural integrity. Unfortunately where Africans are concern the fire, or nature of the Holocaust, was hot, the duration was long, and African cultural integrity, due to disunity, was weak.

THE OTHER

Islam vs. the other, or Christianity vs. the other, or even European vs. the other.

This is the history of human nature from time immoral. The other is in parenthesis in the Old Testament; thou shall not kill (members of my own tribe). It was with us in the beginning of humanity, and if not careful will follow us to the grave of humanity.

The Osu caste system in Nigeria and southern Cameroon, can be traced back to an indigenous religious belief system of the Igbo nation. Some Igbo traditionalists hold that the Osus are people historically owned by deities, and are therefore considered to be a ‘living sacrifice’, an outcaste, untouchable and sub-human. The was true in Ethiopia; the very name Falasha means (foreigners/exiles) was given to Ethiopian Jews by the Emperor Yeshaq in the 15th century.

According to the UN Sub-Commission: Caste systems exist in pockets in some African countries. It is found in parts of Sahelian Africa, particularly in certain West African communities, and among populations in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. Although significantly different in nature and scope, there are some common features between the caste systems of Africa and South Asia. Stigma is often attached to this problem, and as a consequence “low caste” communities in Africa suffer various forms of social exclusion and discrimination, particularly with regard to employment, political representation and inter-caste marriages. [12]

In some slave trading African societies, East, North and West, the conquest in the temporal was a mirror of a divine conquest. Zulu means “The people of the sky” vs. other people who are less “chosen” and because of that status were subject to a vicious campaign. “The Other” is a human problem, fanned by ignorance and binary accusations. And their is no global “other”, all are “your other” defined by each society. From the outside, the group accused of being “the other” is, more often than not, all the same subjective group.

The historical record must not be washed away, we must call the name of those who engaged in the apex of the trade to account for their historical genocide. But at the same time, balance must caution anyone of perceptually blaming Europeans and Arabs, while skipping the internal complexities, weakness and failures still plaguing African communities. Because it does not bring a complete solution to the roots of slavery and inequity; the roots of war and hate.

HOLOCAUST – CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

The events which transpired five thousand years ago; Five years ago or five minutes ago, have determined what will happen five minutes from now; five years From now or five thousand years from now. All history is a current event–John Henrik Clarke

The act of murder, torture, enslavement, and persecution is equal regardless of who, when or where. Killing 6 Jewish civilians is no different from killing 6 Palestinian civilians: The distinctive act of murder is equal. It does not become equal if that murder goes from 6 to 6 million. It is that act of “murder” multiplied by 6 million. Torturing someone, dehumanizing them, taking them from their home (kidnapping), raping them all constitute separate instances of human rights violation. And human rights is human rights regardless of if we are discussing 2011 or 1011, it has generally never been acceptable in human society to torture and rape another human being.

Slavery was not invented by Europeans or Arabs, Christians or Muslims, Romans or Persians, Slavery is the business of human societies. Some of those people engaging in slavery identified as Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Akan, Nigerian, British, Indian, and Chinese. Some existed in 500 BCE some in the 21st century. Almost all advanced societies, with capacity engaged in some form of bondage. So race, geography, religion, ethnicity and time are of no consideration in people’s propensity to engage in slavery.

Now the act of taking an African from their home by force and violence is a crime, and in that crime a minority of Africans played a major role. However, that is one set of crimes and each incident re-occurred over the centuries destabilizing local communities’ development potential.

And without the assistance of any Africans we then come to storing Africans in dungeons and subjecting them to all manner of unspeakable horrors, including rape, in places like Goree or El Mina. On board the ships, Africans were fed alive, as a form of terrorism, to man-eating sharks. All of this constitutes yet another set of human rights violations. Loading and packaging human beings on a ship like sardines and subjecting them to living and breathing in their own urine and excrement is another set of crimes against humanity (again a crime exclusive to Europe in the Atlantic system).

Taking them and selling them off like chattel is yet another crime, dehumanizing them and enslaving them on the plantation is yet another set of crimes against humanity. To disrupt the culture, names, language and religion of those captive people is yet another crime against humanity. To exploit to build the empires of the West for over 300 years; torture, persecute dehumanize them is yet another crime. To finally release them from their Holocaust to be subjects and victims of all forms of racism up until the 60’s is yet another crime. And finally to continue to enjoy the fruits of that legacy, deny and oppress them into the contemporary moment is yet another crime against humanity. And still we see every generation of African inheriting the terrible legacy of self-hate and potential inhibition created at that instance 500 Years ago in Africa.

Numbers (Quantity) and Duration and Nature (Quality of oppression) are three unique factors in the African Holocaust. There is no statute of limitation if the institutions that profited from slavery are today still in existence rich and better off for that terrible trade in flesh. It is only when we understand the African Holocaust in these terms that we realize what is unique about it. There are no comparisons in human history.

CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY

Often the emotion view of slavery sees racism as the principle motive for the Atlantic Slave Trade. However, the mere existence of a capitalist ideology will by default create degrees of servitude. Capitalism looks at numbers and has no moral consideration. It has a relentless dedication to reduce liabilities and increase profits. The numerical capitalist heaven is zero-expense. Slavery was capitalisms best system for achieving a number as close as possible to zero. In this cold calculation slavery was inevitable once new territories were found and sugar cane and other products added to the markets of Europe.

It has been often argued, by some scholars, that slavery did not end for moral reasons. There was no new awakening in the capitalist heart for the inequities which besieged the African slave. The profitability diminished and new alternatives such as sharecropping had brighter lights. It is in the shifting economics of industrialization that slavery as a system began to lose its shine. Again capitalism looked at the numbers and found that between; feeding, clothing and sheltering Africans, as well as quelling rebellions – it was far cheaper to end slavery. And with the rise of Western consumerism all of those ex-slaves became the new clients of their former slave masters.

LEGACY OF THE HOLOCAUST

Jewish people today are able to draw strength from their tragedy while the African-Diaspora still continue to be victims of their Holocaust.

The Jewish nightmare resonates so much that they have shared their pain beyond their cultural group: The image of suffering is iconized in the Jewish holocaust. We can see a film such as “Freedom Writers” where mischievous “ethnic minority” teens are told a Jewish story as an example of “real” suffering.” Why would African-Americans with the most tragic history in America (equaled only by the Native American Holocaust) need to look to European Jews for a story of tragedy?

The answer is simple African-Americans are not agents of these stories which impose themselves at the expense of the African narrative. Even in South Africa (which has no history of Nazi extermination) you will find a Jewish holocaust museum in every major city. Thats not the fault of any Jew, and we must respect their dedication to their holocaust study. But where is the African Holocaust museums? Where is the great monuments built to honor the millions of Africans whose bodies lie at the bottom of the Atlantic? Where is the Pan-African centers for teaching the legacy of Du Bois, Garvey and Malcolm? That speaks only to a mental defect which is the greatest legacy of our African Holocaust.

SLAVERY AS AN EXCUSE FOR EVERYTHING

Many, especially non-Africans have accused some African people of using slavery as an excuse for everything negative. But to be fair there is a lot to be blamed for slavery, its legacy is very real. So while this issue is very true the African must look at this world as a race.The legacy of slavery creates a lot of madness in our community, but do we use that as an excuse? This is the critical question. Gravity holds a rocket on the ground, but do rock engineers use that as an excuse to stay on the ground? While acknowledging the obstacle of gravity they work day and night to escape its pull.

Personal Note: So there is a race, you have to run it or not run it. That is the only options available. Be part of this civilization or be a victim of this civilization. If you opt out—as many have—sitting down means the Chinese come and own your country, taking everything colonialism left behind which most African leaders still squander.

So you can sit down if you want, but do not complain when your water and oil are owned by multinationals. Now it is 100% that we come from the legacy of slavery, that comes as default, you still (with this disadvantage) have to run the same race with the Europeans, Arabs, Turks, Indians and Chinese.

Everyone except the Europeans have some sort of handicap. Maybe the Arabs are entering the race with a broken arm, maybe the Chinese only a broken finger, maybe Africans are the most damaged in the race with no arms at all and myopic vision— but you still must find a way of running that race and being victorious. That is what life handed you. You cannot sit it out and say mental slavery made me late for the start, or the legacy of slavery slowed me down. That might well explain your handicap, but it is of no consequences to the finish line. In short the world does not care about losers and if Africans do not find a way the legacy of slavery will be extended until the Sun consumes the Earth. Its a choice, run or make excuses.

SLAVERY IN AFRICA

African slavery is hardly to be praised. But it was far different from plantation or mining slavery in the Americas, which was lifelong, morally crippling, destructive of family ties, without hope of any future. African slavery lacked two elements that made American slavery the most cruel form of slavery in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, Black was slave. –Howard Zinn

Most European reports of slavery throughout Africa in the 1600s and beyond are not reliable sources because they often conflated various forms of servitude as equal to chattel slavery.[11] And this also was a problem with the entire history of Africa from a Western point of view in all areas; religion, culture, economic and even warfare (Thornton). Africa made sense exclusively in terms already observed in the European worldview–even if they were totally different. So slavery had no nuance, it was slavery as Europeans practiced it. Warfare as Europeans practiced it, religion lost all nuance it was just paganism.

The line that defines what is and isn’t slavery is blurred and there is no secret that when ethnic groups and nationalities fought in wars the vanquished where given into a system of subservience to the victors: askew rules of war. However, let not the word “slavery” allow an analogue to what happened on the plantations of Jamaica, Brazil and America.

The limits of language take radically different systems, Atlantic slavery and Vassalship in Africa, and subject them to the same treatment because they share the same abstract word “slave.” In Africa there were no fields filled with men and women tolling away to the crack of a whip. There was no place where so-called slaves outnumbered their enslavers. Chattel Slavery did not exist within Africa but serfdom, servitude or vassalship did, as it did in most of Europe and the rest of the world. In addition, this vassalship was scattered and infrequent; it was never the commerce of the land. Most non-free people could amass wealth and upward mobility was very frequent.

Some, as in the case of Ali Kolon ascended the ranks to become rulers. Many enslaved people were employed in high government office with virtually no restrictions on their native language, religion etc. Naturally, it suits the people who profited from slavery to make the world think that slavery was the fault of Africans, and that slavery was good for Africa and natural to Africans.

The most brutal phase of enslavement came into play when enslaved people started to become transported outside of their local zones to distant locations (inside of Africa or outside of Africa). This happened as greater centralized African and later Arab powers came to the table. They had the power to seek captives in distant slave pools, and the lust to source free labor to expand their national objectives. The transportation over long distances increase mortality. The rise of larger civilizations meant specialization became more frequent, the dedicated solider, the merchant, and the professional slaver.

NEW RESEARCH | SLAVERY UNIQUE TO NATION STATES

New research reveals that up until the 15th century, most of the world was still under band and tribal groupings. (Diamond, 2005) Africa was no different, as a majority of the continent, like the majority of most continents, were not in organized states. Only states have use for slavery, it is not a feature of hunter gather society which does not have the specialization to accommodate captives. Tribal groupings also rarely have slavery. It would therefore be safe to say African slavery was confined to states, and kingdoms. It was not an ubiquitous reality.

NUMBERS LOST

Numbers lost in any tragedy is always political and we must approach this controversial subject from a different angle. People seem very fascinated with numbers, almost like boasting rights and we must remember numbers are only part of the great tragedy; the horror of being enslaved as a race for 300 years and the consequences of that enslavement need just as much passion in debate circles.

But we start the discussion of numbers enslaved or lost to slavery by an appreciation of what we know, what we might know, and what we will never know. We also have to consider the complexity of the challenge when discussing “numbers lost.”

While traditional studies often focus on official French and British records of how many Africans arrived in the “New World” these studies neglect the death from raids, the fatalities on-board the ships, introduced European diseases, the victims from the consequences of enslavement,

and the trauma of refugees displaced by slaving activities. The numbers of arrivals also neglects the volume of Africans who arrived via pirate ships who for obvious reasons wouldn’t’ have kept records. In her book Dreams of Africa in Alabama, Sylviane Diouf details the lives of the enslaved Africans to be brought to the U.S. even after emancipation. Most of this history is neglected in calculating numbers of Africans stolen into slavery.

In the centuries of death that surrounded slavery some suggest that a few kings got rich or life in Africa was so horrid that being brought to slave plantations was a progressive life style change. (See African Kingdoms for Africa prior to slavery) If 12-15 million Africans arrived in the New World. Over 10 million died as direct consequences of the Atlantic slave trade alone. But no one knows the exact number. An often-neglected study within history is the value of population demographics as a function of time. 30 million people 500 years ago is not equivalent to 30 million people today because 30 million as a percentage of the world population represented 500 years ago is far greater than what it represents today.

We must also realize the percentage of Africans in a state of slavery might have meant that 40% of all Africans alive were enslaved at any given period in the last 300 years. In short this means that African, by a landmark, are the most enslaved people in the history of humanity; by any and all definitions of slavery. It is estimated that by the height of the Transatlantic slave trade the population of Africa unlike the rest of the World had stagnated by 50%.. See How Europe underdeveloped Africa. “Walter Rodney”

Not only was Transatlantic Slavery of demographic significance, in the aggregate population losses but also in the profound changes to settlement patterns, epidemiological exposure and reproductive and social-economic development potential. (Shahadah) Thus Africa’s development potential was being experienced outside of Africa, as opposed to inside Africa. This was perhaps the most profound destructive factor to the development of Africa. Systems of enslavement inside of Africa never underdeveloped the continent, while the Transatlantic Slave trade did at the same time enriching Europe.

Because if 12 million arrived how many generations from that 12 million were subjected to slavery? 140 million Africans in the Western Hemisphere, most of them the direct consequence of the Atlantic Slave Trade. So now consider 350 years of slavery how many African generations were enslaved, how many people died via that horrid process of enslavement? These are the new questions which must be attached to the old study of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

SOURCES ON DEATH TOLL FROM SLAVERY

Everyone with a PhD and not, has had a crack at the numbers lost to the Atlantic Slave system. In American Holocaust (1992), David Stannard estimates that some 30 to 60 million Africans died being enslaved. He claims a 50% mortality rate among new slaves while being gathered and held in Africa, a 10% mortality among the survivors while crossing the ocean, and another 50% mortality rate in the first “seasoning” phase of slave labor. Overall, he estimates a 75-80% mortality rate in transit.

In “The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust” (Is the Holocaust Unique, A. Greebaum, ed., 1996), Seymour Drescher estimates that 21M were enslaved, 1700-1850, of which 7M remained in slavery inside Africa. 4M died “as a direct result of enslavement”. Of the 12M shipped to America, 15%, or 2M more, died in the Middle Passage and seasoning year.

Jan Rogozinski, A Brief History of the Caribbean (1994): “[A]s many as eight million Africans may have died in order to bring four million slaves to the Caribbean islands.”
In The Slave Trade, Hugh Thomas estimates that 13M left African ports, and 11,328,000 arrived. Here are a few other numbers from Thomas:

Rummel estimates a total death toll of 17,267,000 African slaves (1451-1870)

Orient: 2,400,000 dead

Captives staying in Africa: 1,200,000 dead

Enslaved going to New World: 13,667,000 dead

Fredric Wertham claims that 150,000,000 Africans died of the slave trade. Looking at all the speculations on demographic impact on Africa we can estimate that at bear minimum 35% of those enslaved in Africa died before reaching the slave ships. Between these extreme possibilities the most likely mortality rate is 62%.

In terms of absolute numbers, the lowest possible is 6 million. If we assume the absolute worst, a death toll as high as 60 million is at the very edge of possibility (including indirect death, epidemiological exposure, etc.; however, the likeliest number of deaths would fall somewhere from 15 to 20 million.[ref]

If 5 million slaves were shipped in the 18th Century (the busiest century, see Hugh Thomas, above), then the 18th Century death toll could be around 8.1 million. (=5/11*17.8)
And what is often neglected, deliberately so, that these numbers are only the dead among the first generation of enslaved Africans brought from Africa. Subsequent generations would contribute additional unnatural deaths..[ref]

Muhammad Shareef: The image is always given that the Africans themselves acquiesce to the process of slavery. But you’ll find that in West Africa there was a polity or a political entity that existed that guaranteed security right across West Africa and that was the Songhai Empire. We saw Malik Sy in the 16th Century as well, and men like Abdul Qadeer and Cherno Sulayman Kaba, these men who waged resistance in what is known as Futa Toro and Futa Jalon. Also the campaigns of Nasr al-Din’s [Nasser Uddin] (Tubenan movement) anti-slavery and Western imposition galvanized Africans in the region in the late 17th century.

There was Nzinga and the Southern areas of Africa as well that was fighting its resistance against European invasion. All the way up until the 17th Century men like Umar Tall, Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodiod and Umar Futi as well as Ahmed Lobo. And then we had the courageous wars, which took place in 1884 under the armies of Muhammad Ahmed, Ibn Abdullahi of the Sudan as well as Muhammad Abdullahi al Hassan of Somalia. And then we had in 1903 finally, the wars that took place between the Sokoto Empire.

Probably about one in ten slaving voyages experienced major rebellions, of which the attempts to control increased the costs of a slave voyage to the point where far fewer slaves entered the traffic than would have been the case without resistance. In addition, vessels from some regions on the coast appear to have been more prone to experience slave uprisings than those from other regions. So the Africans did not acquiesce colonialism, nor did they acquiesce towards slavery, they fought at every point. The image of Europeans as the liberators of African (as if Africans just waited by the river watching the clouds go by) is part of the take-away from Africans as agents. And in fact when the slaves were landing in the Western hemisphere in Bahia Brazil you saw the emergence of jihad movements.

You saw the emergence of men like Muhammad Sambo who led a two-month jihad in the Louisiana territories in North America. Men like Nat Turner and other men who refused to submit to slavery. The Haitian Revolution as well. Men like Macantow. So The Africans never acquiesce to slavery in fact we can say this year that the whole concept of freedom that the American thirteen colonies had, they got that concept of freedom and liberty from the African resistance movement that took place in the Western Hemisphere.”

What did the Slave Master learn from Bahia et al? That it was critical to separate the African (the one who just arrived with a memory of home) from the conditioned slave (the one born into enslavement). Teaching the conditioned slave to hate anything African, anyone who remembers another home is dangerous to the designs of slavery.

If any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good requires that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away– Samuel A. Cartwright

Drapetomania was a supposed mental illness described by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851 that caused African slaves to flee captivity. So ingrained was the notion of Africans only purpose being in the capacity as slaves, it was seen as unnatural and a sickness that would cause them to want to escape slavery. And today we must ask what has really changed? Africans in America seeking to rename their children in the African traditions, or seek African ways of life, African religions, or African culture, are seen as “confused.”

WHO SOLD US OUT

The fact of the dual involvement of Europeans and Africans in the slave trade did not imply equal partnership, but rather parallel lines of activity originating from different cultural and political space–Anne C. Bailey

In popular circles there is a “Who sold us into slavery?” debate that has been raging for years. It however has done little to advance a pure understanding of the African reality. It has always been used to divide African loyalty, and foster further distrust in Pan-African communities: by targeting certain countries, ethnic groups or religious groups. If African people are to heal and come to terms, and hence grow and reach a higher potential, it is impossible to avoid this issue for it will stymie Pan-African development. Understanding this notion of “Selling out” is critical aspect of the African Holocaust.

Now who did the “selling out” is not a binary Diaspora vs Continental issue. The “selling out” personality was on the boats that carried Africans to the New World, it was on the plantations, it followed its way into current leadership in Africa and the America’s: It lives in the heart of all those who try to fragment Africans by location, tribe and religion. It creates distrust and suspicion around great works, and leads Africans into nothingness rather than glory. It tries to suggest patterns of “selling out” to create distrust to further the political agenda of certain groups: “Oh it was the Christians that sold us out.” But the historical record clears both Islam and Christianityas the primary agent involved in “selling out” Africans to the Atlantic or even Arab slave trade. So what we are left with is the 100% agency of African people: Africans as free people, uninfluenced doing Holocaust.

Ethnic groups who may have engaged in selling other groups, at later stages as the system got out of control, may have themselves been taken to the New World. So there is zero point in binary Diaspora vs Continent blame games. It is impossible to point to West Africa and say “they sold us out”. It was a human personality that betrayed truth and justice when under duress, there is a more worrying and insidious human personality of greed and myopic ambition that has found its way through history into the current African leadership, that sells it resources and condemns its people to poverty to service Western designs, which reward this betrayal with trinkets.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Who sold Africa out is the personality of greed and selfishness, and moreover disunity. The failure of African people to purge the “devil” within. It is not the people of Ghana, or the people of Nigeria, The Muslims, or the Christian converts, that was the sole culprit, because this generalization does not account for the traitors on the plantations of Louisiana. It does not account for the overseers who made deals to usurp African rebellion. And it goes soft in dealing with the flaws inside of ATR that were the biggest justification for enslavement. It also generalizes targeted African groups who remained in Africa but were equal victims of enslavement.

WHY AFRICANS

A lot of research has revealed that Africans as a group were suitable for enslavement due to physical endurance; resistance to disease, the advantages of procuring large numbers from slave pools. But there was something more profound than that, that made Africans ripe for enslavement. A failure of people of Africa to form defenses around spheres of interest. And that started, for what ever reason, because of a failure to understand continental interest above national interest. And this is tied hard and fast to notions of identity. Through no fault of African people in antiquity, since they had no reason then to have a Pan-African identity. However it is certainly an ongoing issue in Africa today, where blame can be laid squarely with contemporary Africans and no one else.

What Africans are still not getting, is, never let “internal” squabbles or confusions around difference (religious, ethnic, political, etc), allow a foreign aggression or agendas in Africa: Some term this divide and conquer, but steps to counter it are fleeting, especially when those that advocate unity are also busy causing disunity. So still the lessons of history have not be learned The failure to have a clear hierarchy of agendas allowed the African Holocaust. The African Holocaust affected all Africans, and required all Africans to close ranks around this issue. However. the issue of a pan-African concern was secondary, or non-existent to a “tribal” concern. The myopic acceptance of partnerships with Europe to rid one of a local enemy still work then and now in African politics. And even with hindsight this pattern of divide and rule is stated, but not fully understood. Africans will always have to deal with each other and conflict is inevitable, but in the hierarchy of interest, defense of the Motherland today must reign supreme.

AFRICAN IDENTITY IN ATLANTIC AFRICA

The viewpoint that “Africans” enslaved “Africans” is obfuscating if not troubling. The deployment of “African” in African history tends to coalesce into obscurantist constructions of identities that allow scholars, for instance, to subtly call into question the humanity of “all” Africans. Whenever Asante rulers sold non-Asantes into slavery, they did not construct it in terms of Africans selling fellow Africans. They saw the victims for what they were, for instance, as Akuapems, without categorizing them as fellow Africans. Equally, when Christian Scandinavians and Russians sold war captives to the Islamic people of the Abbasid Empire, they didn’t think that they were placing fellow Europeans into slavery. This lazy categorizing homogenizes Africans and has become a part of the methodology of African history; not surprisingly, the Western media’s cottage industry on Africa has tapped into it to frame Africans in inchoate generalities allowing the media to describe local crisis in one African state as “African” problem – Dr. Akurang-Parry, Ending the Slavery Blame, Ghana Web

When we study the dilemma which created a supply of slaves for the Western markets we see that the primary process was warring Africans. While some historians consider these merely “Slave Raids” it can be shown that casualties would have been experienced on both sides and thus making such activities more akin to warfare. Even if that warfare was against a “weaker” nation who served as a target group for procuring captives. The long standing temptation is to paint all these groups as African fighting Africans. However, in this historical period there was no African identity. People in 15th century Africa never heard of “Black people” as an identity.

While they had knowledge of self from an internal perspective, that knowledge of self lacked a relationship to other African groups in the broader sense, especially when confronted with the arrival of Europeans. And that is key because being proud to be Zulu, for example, but seeing a Xhosa as different is a narrow understanding of ‘self.’ And this failure made it easy for identities, whether ethnic or national, to be used as a opportunity for exploitation. And this is not unique to Africa, the same thing happened everywhere the European went in his expansion where he met different ethnic groups.

Perhaps this is also the largest factor which added the European interest in Africa, lack of a singular identity. The Aro Confederacy and the Imbangala cult, all had strict conceptions of what made an individual eligible for enslavement. Among such criteria were constructions of gender, definitions of criminal behavior (which expanded and corrupted as demand increased), and conventions for dealing with prisoners of war. The Serer for example had a policy of not keeping their enemies as slaves, so they killed them. (Martin Klein) While in other communities various regulations govern their POW. All of this was never static as duress increased from the consequences of the Atlantic slave machine.

Modern Slavery is fundamentally an economic phenomenon. Throughout history, slavery has existed where it has been economically worthwhile to those in power. The principal example in modern times is the U.S. South. It is preposterous and a historical denial to say that slavery did not significantly build the West. Obviously the likes of John Thornton are self-serving and protecting the wealth of the West by denying and spinning the contributions gained from slavery. There was not only direct monetary reward from holding slaves to do work on a plantation. Enslaved people also allowed their captors “free hands” to pursue activities which further enriched the West.

Nearly 4 million enslaved Africans with a market value of close to $4 billion lived in the U.S. just before the Civil War. Masters enjoyed rates of return on slaves comparable to those on other assets; cotton consumers, insurance companies, and industrial enterprises benefited from slavery as well. Such valuable property required rules to protect it,

and the institutional practices surrounding slavery display a sophistication that rivals modern-day law and business. (100 trillion dollars, based on 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865, with a compounded interest of 6% (and that is only for the USA),

The currency used in the African economic system of was the Okpoho (anillas are penannular armlets, mostly in bronze or copper). The word comes from the Igbo language known to in Spanish as Manillas.

Masters profited from reproduction as well as production. Southern planters encouraged slaves to have large families because U.S. slaves lived long enough — unlike those elsewhere in the New World — to generate more revenue than cost over their lifetimes. But researchers have found little evidence of slave breeding; instead, masters encouraged slaves to live in nuclear or extended families for stability. Lest one think sentimentality triumphed on the Southern plantation, one need only recall the willingness of most masters to sell if the bottom line was attractive enough.

See Also: Ideology versus the tyranny of paradigm : historians and the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on African societies. (J E Inikori)

COMPANIES WHO PROFITED FROM SLAVERY

Investment banks Brown Bros. Harriman and Lehman Bros. Railroads Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National. Textile maker WestPoint Stevens. Newspaper publishers Knight Ridder, Tribune, Media General, Advance Publications, E.W. Scripps and Gannett, parent and publisher of USA TODAY. 850 The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad, part of CSX today, paid slave owners $30 to $150 apiece to rent slaves for a year. Price in 1850: $150 In today’s dollars: $3,379 1856 The Mobile & Girard, now part of Norfolk Southern, offered slaveholders $180 apiece for slaves they would rent to the railroad for one year. 1856: $180 Today: $3,737 1859 The Central of Georgia, a Norfolk Southern line today, valued its slaves at $31,303. 1859: $31,303 Today: $663,033 1865 The Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, today part of CSX, placed a value of $128,773 on the slaves it lost as a result of emancipation at the conclusion of the Civil War. 1865: $128,773 Today: $1.4 million 1865 The Mobile & Ohio, now part of Canadian National, valued slaves lost to the war and emancipation at $199,691. 1865: $199,691 Today: $2.2 million. Sources: Economic History Services, USA TODAY research The list of corporations tied to slavery is likely to grow. Eventually, it could include energy companies that once used slaves to lay oil lines beneath Southern cities, mining companies whose slaves dug for coal and salt, tobacco marketers that relied on slaves to cultivate and cure tobacco.

Slavery’s long shadow also could fall over some of Europe’s oldest financial houses, which were leading financiers of the antebellum cotton trade. Lloyd’s of London, the giant insurance marketplace, could become a target because member brokerages are believed to have insured ships that brought slaves from Africa to the USA and cotton from the South to mills in New England and Britain.

REPARATIONS DEBATE

The United States owes African-Americans over $100 trillion in reparations, based on 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865, with a compounded interest of 6%. Africans in America today have been enduring struggles of discrimination, lynchings, indentured servitude, high imprisonment rates from disproportionate bias sentencing, sold to the highest sugar cane and sharecropper plantation owners and the historical impact that slavery had on African American even today, that lost of wealth in inheritance, land, pay, history, culture, family names.

When it comes to the Jews the flexibility of justice twist and turns to explain why Jews deserve compensation but Africans do not. Laws are used to obfuscate and blur issues. Broken analogues are made “If we paid everyone for every wrong in history where would it end?” There is however no statute of limitations on an ongoing Holocaust which impacts Africans the world over. It is not a historical event like when Rome sacked Greece; confined to ancient history. After the WW2, until now, Germany is sentenced to pay reparations even to grandchildren of the victims of the Jewish Holocaust.

As Boyce Watkins in response to Henry Louis Gates controversial remarks: “If a young girl is sold into prostitution by her own parents, the pimp must still pay for the suffering he caused the young woman. He can’t simply say, “Her parents made a deal with me, so you should stop the blame game…I am not sure why Gates has gone out of his way to assuage white guilt in America. I hope that’s not the price a Black man must pay in order to write an op-ed in the New York Times.”

There is no escaping African culpability in the Atlantic slave trade. However, the principle benefactor was clearly European nations. Also African participation in the 300 year old system was for but a blink of an eye. How could it be possible to hold both equally guilty? The person that sells the gun is guilty for that moment, but the person that uses it to kill for years is clearly at a different level of criminality.

Also, most enslaved people in the West were in that state for all of their lives by European process, not African. Those who were captured in Africa were touched by the African component briefly– and never again in the history of their enslavement. African involvement, while shameful, was was hardly a partnership in Holocaust, beyond the initial capture and sale.

And while the institutions of Arabia and Zanzibar that have profited from slavery have long vanished from our era, those in Europe still remain. They therefore have inherited both the profit and the lost of their trade in human flesh. And the victims of this horror are exclusively African. Therefore those victims have the right to forgive those whom they chose and bring charges against those they deem key persecutors of crimes against humanity.

It is not appropriate for the principle culprit to point fingers and say “I didn’t act alone.” Each will be judged according to the level of crime and the profits they derived from the crime. It is actually even part of European law; no court gives a lesser sentence to each individual because they happen to act in a group. Africans can therefore (without suggestion or help from Whites) deal with those African nations and kings who profited from slavery as they see fit.

REPARATIONS MEANS REPAIR

Reparations means repair. And that repair has to last every subsequent generation to come. When you go and buy a BMW with the “reparations check” what will that repair? Apart from BMW USA sales? So repair means things like University education — for free, for those willing (a critical component in repair to engage a persons own healing processes).

After all this time the general public still frames the debate in terms of a personal cash windfall, a check in the post. We (Africans) do it because we sometimes do not realize repair, the Holocaust and lack of full conscious means a corruption of the holistic understanding of repair and healing. The institutions destroyed by slavery must be rebuilt so that the people, for every generation to come, can rebuild themselves and their self worth.

Personal Message: Now the crime against our ancestors is an open wound. And we cannot rest until there is justice. But there is a justice we can do for self. Do not be dis-empowered, do not be uneducated and do not be economically weak, do not destroy family and do not disunite. Let those who died for Africa know that we escaped the shackles of slavery. But every time we drop out of school, do crime, disrespect our history and our culture we are doing an injustice to their memory. We are confirming the legacy of slavery.

SLAVERY AS A PENAL SYSTEM

Today there is an overemphasis on the word ‘slavery’ where slavery means the involuntary removal of an individual’s freedom. But the restriction of degrees of freedom is an ongoing aspect of human societies; where if members of a given society commit undesirable acts (not paying tax, adultery, treason, terrorism, etc) then systems were designed to curb the freedom of these individuals. So today America calls it the Criminal Justice System, history calls it Slavery. And in America’s system Africans are again targeted and taken out of the voting process and the competitive job process. So while this is not chattel slavery it is akin to the broader social slavery seen in history.

A judicial process was in place throughout most of Africa to preserve the law of the land; resources were such that large expensive industrial complexes were not viable. The Transatlantic Slave system distinguished itself because there was no crime on the part of the victims, simply being of African ethnic origin was the “crime.” Moreover the inhumanity and absolute debasement of the human being and then the subsequent legacy of this system which still exist and still creates privilege and opportunity for the majority of European descendants.

SLAVERY AND RELIGION

Religion is not the opium of the masses but religion must be used as an arm by the revolutionary forces–Kwame Ture

There is not one major indigenous African faith (that engaged in slavery) that had an issue with slavery, not one African native religion had principles that denounced slavery. Between the most aggressive slavers in West Africa such as Oyo, Benin, Igala, Kaabu, Asanteman, Dahomey, the Aro Confederacy – none of them Christian or Muslim.

None of them had principle objections to slavery. Therefore, the challenge which is posed to Islam and Christianity for having a tolerance for slavery is also true for the religions native to Africa. The only true difference between Islam and Christianity and indigenous faith is power. They had more power to destroy and had the added side-effect of carrying the culture of the conquering party: may that party be Arab, European, or another African group (see Songhai and Mali).

And today the old urban legend of religion and oppression is invalid. The new tools of oppression hide themselves in western democracy. And in the Trojan horse of democracy are the soldiers of the free market, globalization and debt. False focus on religion is a death sentence, like worrying about a spider when a lion is about to pounce.

The African Holocaust is also sadly not confined to history or to external influences. Darfur, the Congo, Sierra Leon and Rwanda are testimony to some of the horrors today. And although the legacy of Colonialism is clearly at the root of these problems it would be immoral not to see that Africans, like everyone else, are capable of unspeakable brutality. Just as in the European-European Holocaust during WW2.

Modern slavery in Africa can be seen as a continuation or outgrowth of slave-trading practices in the past. Africans have stepped into the boots and habits of the retreating colonizers. Forced labor was used to an overwhelming extent in King Leopold’s Congo Free State and on Portuguese plantations of Cape Verde and San Tome. But the majority factor is abject poverty, if the poverty is fixed it will automatically fix the slavery.

In Sudan and Mauritania and parts of Mali and Chad the slavery vacated by the abolition of what is called Arab slavery still continue in pockets of the country (explained in the video by Ali Mazrui). It is often cited that the Arab slave trade is still an ongoing activity, especially in places such as Sudan and Mauritania. And this is true, despite it being legally outlawed. But what is not mentioned is slavery goes on all over the world. 27 million people are trapped in some form of modern slavery may it be white sex slaves in Israel and Eastern Europe, Child slavery in Ghana, ritual slavery in South Africa.

PROBLEM IDENTIFYING SLAVERY

Another issue with 21st century slavery is it is easy to lose the word “slavery” in the linguistic technicality of what is and what is not not slavery. The lines are blurred and in some cases it is hard to determine if it is a human rights issue or a labor rights issue: A case of bad labor rights regarding how people are treated by their employers. Does it stop being slavery if someone is paid $1 a week? And what is the definition of paid, as payment can be in exchange for food and board. Then the only consideration is “freedom,” but freedom in itself is problematic. Are you free to leave your masters home when you have no family, shelter or security outside of their walls? Clearly people can leave but by doing so they put themselves in greater harm. So again “freedom” is a matter of perspective.

MODERN SLAVERY TODAY

Today in the Congo the indigenous people are usually victims of their Bantu neighbors, who have replaced the positions once held by Europeans. Ethnic hatred against vulnerable groups such as the so-called Pygmies (Bayaka) is neglected because it is not as sensational as Darfur or Rwanda. But these people are dehumanized and treated as 2nd class citizens by the Bantu Settlers. The uncomfortable reality is an aspect of the African Holocaust has to be ‘self-inflicted’ horrors which cannot be escaped via the smooth language of evasion.

Sex slavery is a major problem in South Africa. Women seeking refugee status in South Africa from other African countries are trafficked by other refugees. An estimated 1000 Mozambican girls are trafficked to Johannesburg each year and sold as sex slaves or as wives to the Mozambican mine workers. When identified by police in South Africa victims of trafficking are deported as illegal immigrants with no treatment for being victims of sex slavery. Victims are afraid of law enforcement and do not trust the police to assist them. South Africa shares borders with Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland. It has 72 official ports of entry “and a number of unofficial ports of entry where people come in and out without being detected” along it’s 5 000km-long land borderline. The problem of porous borders is compounded by the lack of adequately trained employees, resulting in few police officials controlling large portions of the country’s coastline.

Religious Slavery ( Trokosi ) in modern Ghana is the continuing tradition of giving of virgin girls to the gods for religious atonement or payment for services. This was part of many ancient religions in this region with some connection to Vodun practices. In West Africa the practice has gone on for at least several hundred years. Similar practices using similar terminology were found in the royal court in the 18th and 19th centuries. Wives, slaves, and in fact all persons connected with the royal palace of Dahomey were called “ahosi”, from “aho” meaning “king”, and “si” meaning “dependent” or “subordinate.”

In Ethiopia, children are trafficked into prostitution, to provide cheap or unpaid labor, and to work as domestic servants or beggars.

The only permanent solution is to eliminate the conditions that perpetuate Modern slavery – poverty. People movements is largely driven by either conflict or poverty, both lead to conditions which foster modern slavery. Tackling just the visible head, as many NGOs are doing, leaves room for the roots to keep recreating the problem.

MAAFA OR HOLOCAUST

The term Maafa and African Holocaust express identical ideas. What is true for one is true for the other. They are interchangeable. But the purpose of these two terms is different, Maafa is the African term to self-describe the African Holocaust. The term African Holocaust is the English term to create an instant understanding of the gravity of what this term means to an English speaking audience who are familiar with the horrors the world “holocaust” invoke. Just like the Jews have Ha-Shoah and Jewish Holocaust. No one owns the word Holocaust, and if someone did, it is certainly not Jewish people. It is not a Hebrew or Yiddish word, and was not created to describe their historical experience. Like all words in English, meanings and applications change politically. If there is a copyright on words, well why stop with Holocaust?

Slavery Fact Sheets

Geography
1. Enslaved Africans came primarily from a region stretching from the Senegal River in northern Africa to Angola in the South.
2. Europeans divided this stretch of land into five coasts:

Upper Guinea Coast: The area delineated by the Senegal and Gambia Rivers

Ivory (or Kwa Kwa or Windward) Coast:Central Liberia

Lower Guinea Coast: Divided into the Gold Coast on the west (Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana), the Slave Coast (Togo, Benin, and western Nigeria), and the Bight of Benin (Nigeria and Cameroon)

Gabon

Angola

3. The Angolan coast supplied nearly half the slaves sent to the Americas.

Organization
1. The notion of ethnic groups, combing a common language and customs with a political structure is mistaken. Atlantic Africa was divided into states (political units) and nations (cultural units). Slavery was a royal enterprise; the European kings sponsored slavery and issued assientos, royal slaving permits. These were sold to the elite merchants of the day and become items of value like stocks and shares today. Ovando, the Spanish governor of Hispaniola complained not to export anymore Africans as they were aggressive and reinforcing the ranks of resistance among the Native-Americans. These early imported Muslim Africans were proving hard to handle but as labor shortage got critical due to the waning of the indigenous population, Ovando reassessed the situation and demanded that Africans be sent. Royal decree targeted the Guinea coast in a mandate, which was to avoid the Islamic African influence. However, over the duration of the trade approximately 30% of those sent to the New World were Muslims

2. While some states were quite large, others were quite modest in size and many were tiny, consisting of a capital town of a few thousand people and a dozen villages under its control.
3. In the 17th century, 70 percent of the people lived in states with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.
4. Private wealth usually derived from control of dependents–clients, pawns, wives in polygynous households, and indentured servants.

African Slavery

1. African law recognized slavery but respected the culture and linage of those that were enslaved. Slaves were also part of the family and often the line between slave and non-slave was blurred.

2. A relatively low population density existed in Africa as compared to Europe and Asia. This low density had profound impact on Africa’s development potential after slavery became a economic mainstay of Europe.

3. Slavery had existed in the medieval empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, and slave exports had supplemented the export of gold. Most of those enslaved where prisoners of war or debt criminals. Large prisons were not a concept and hence slavery was a system to deal with undesirables.

4. Although African slavery was generally domestic slavery akin to indentured servitude. In Africa the enslaved were used in a wider variety of ways than in the New World: they were employed as agricultural workers, soldiers, scribes, servants, and government officials.

5. The great majority of slaves sold to Europeans were not slaves in Africa; they were usually recent war captives or victims of banditry and judicial proceedings.

6. Chattel slavery, manumission and social ascension were very rare.

7. Multi-generational slavery was uncommon in Africa; in part this reflected the fact that most African slaves were women.

8. During the early years of enslavement, African slaves usually worked under supervision. Then many became “allotment slaves,” who worked five or six days until about 2 p.m. on the master’s lands, and in the evenings and on their days off, worked their own plots. In the third stage settled slaves spent most of their time working their land in exchange for a fixed obligation, usually what it took to feed an adult male for a year.

Slave Trade

1. During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, 90% of those enslaved, were sent to the Caribbean and the South America.

2. The Atlantic slave trade carried about two to three men for every woman.

3. The slave trade reduced the adult male population by about 20 percent, dramatically altering the ratio of working adults to dependents and of adult men to adult women.

4. One result of unbalanced sex ratios was to further encourage polygyny.

5. Another result was to reduce traditional male forms of work, such as hunting, fishing, livestock rearing, the clearing of fields, the chopping down of trees, and the digging up of roots. The result was a less protein rich diet and a reduction in agricultural productivity.

6. About 14 percent of slaves sent to the New World were children under 14; 56 percent were male adults; and 30 percent were female adults.

Myths About Slave Trade and Slavery

Myth: Not all African women were forced to sleep with the slave masters (raped).Fact: Rape is not only grabbing someone and throwing them in the bush and forcing sex on them against their will—that is violent rape. But there is another kind of rape that went on during all oppressions placed on African people. There was also a process of fear, which persuaded African women to lay with their oppressors and give into the masters wants or suffered a life of misery: Exposed to the lash of an overseer in the hot sun, or had your entire family split up to the abyss by the speculators. Another form of what is a social rape is to create a society so oppressed that it seeks from the enslaved some way to lighten the color of its children so they might escape the whip of slavery and the taboo of “blackness.” The implanting of the notion of a helpless African man, contrasted against the power and security—and hence superiority of the White man—was also a mental form of oppression imposed on African women. See “Incidents of a slave girl” Harriet Jacobs.

Myth: Slavery is a product of capitalism.Fact: The transatlantic slave trade is in direct relationship with modern concepts of exploitive capitalism. Capitalism was the driver behind the transatlantic slave trade (see Eric Williams)

Myth: Slavery is a product of Western Civilization.Fact: Slavery is virtually a universal institution. However the industrialized chattel slavery the race base nature and the duration are peculiar to the transatlantic slave trade.

Myth: Slavery in the non-western world was a mild, benign, and non-economic institution.Fact: Slaves were always subject to torture, sexual exploitation, and arbitrary death. However the scale of the brutality and the institutionalization of people as chattel was unique in type and proliferation in the Western slave models.

Myth: Slavery was an economically backward and inefficient institution.Fact: Many of the most progressive societies in the world had slaves. Forms of slavery allowed the building of many of the world’s empires. Today the low wage lower classes and machines fill the roles slaves traditionally did in society. So still the wealthy today exist because of some form of exploitation of the majority.

Myth: Slavery was always based on race.Fact: Not until the 15th century was slavery associated primarily with people of African descent. Race became a factor which justified enslavement once it became the mainstay of Western economies. (see Black Codes)

Enslavement and the Slave Trade

Myth: New World slaves came exclusively from West Africa.Fact: Half of all New World slaves came from central Africa.

Myth: Europeans physically enslaved Africans or hired mercenaries who captured people for export or that African rulers were “Holocaust abettors” who were themselves to blame for the slave trade.Fact: Europeans did engage in some slave raiding; the majority of people who were transported to the Americas were enslaved by Africans in Africa. Europeans politically created anarchy in Africa feeding greed and putting others in a dilemma “sell or be sold.” With the destruction of the economy and the absences of the most virile in African societies slavery became a mono-economy feeding the cycle of destruction. Europeans created mechanisms which ensured conflict and the push-pull demand for slaves.

Myth: Many slaves were captured with nets.Fact: There is no evidence that slaves were captured with nets; war was the most important source of enslavement.

Myth: Kidnapping was the usual means of enslavement.Fact: War was the most important source of enslavement; it would be incorrect to reduce all of these wars to slave raids.

Myth: The Middle Passage stripped enslaved Africans of their cultural heritage and transformed them into docile, passive figures wholly receptive to the cultural inputs of their masters.Fact: Slaves engaged in at least 250 documented shipboard rebellions. The destruction of African culture happen not on the slave ships but via the plantation system where Christianity and terror were used to mentally enslave African people. Evidence shows that in areas where new African slaves were constantly being introduced (such as Jamaica) had more incidences of rebellion due to the resistance of the new arrivals.

Slavery in the Americas

Myth: Most slaves were imported into what is now the United StatesFact: Well over 90 percent of slaves from Africa were imported into the Caribbean and South America

Myth: Slavery played a marginal role in the history of the AmericasFact: African slaves were the only remedy for the labor shortages that plagued Europe’s New World dominions. Fact: Slave labor made it profitable to mine for precious metal and to harvest sugar, indigo, and tobacco; slaves taught whites how to raise such crops as rice and indigo.

Myth: Europeans arrived in the New World in far larger numbers than did Africans.

Fact: Before 1820, the number of Africans outstripped the combined total of European immigrants by a ratio of 3, 4, or 5 to 1.Myth: The first slaves arrived in what is now the U.S. in 1619Fact: Slaves arrived in Spanish Florida at least a century before 1619 and a recently uncovered census shows that blacks were present in Virginia before 1619.

Slave Culture

Myth: The slave trade permanently broke slaves’ bonds with Africa.Fact: Slaves were able to draw upon their African cultural background and experiences and use them as a basis for life in the New World. The drum and the Griot tradition are still alive in the music of the Diaspora. The food and elements of the language, the social structure, the “cool” still are defining characteristics of the African Diaspora. The greatest disconnection with Africa may have actually happened post-emancipation where being American or being more integrated allowed cultural drift into a more Eurocentric identity.

Myth: Plantation life with its harsh labor, unstable families, and high mortality, made it difficult for Africans to construct social tiesFact: African nations persisted in America well into the 18th century and even the early 19th century despite the overt destruction of the family the denouncement of religious and marital values.

Myth: Masters assigned names to slaves or slaves imitated masters’ systems of naming.Fact: In fact, slaves were rarely named for owners. Naming patterns appear to have reflected African practices, such as the custom of giving children “day names” (after the day they were born) and “name-saking,” such as naming children after grandparents.

Myth: Slaveholders sought to deculturate slaves by forbidding African names and languages and obliterating African culture.Fact: While deculturation was part of the “project” of slavery, in fact African music, dance, decoration, design, cuisine, and religion exerted a profound, ongoing influence on American culture.Fact: Slaves adapted religious rites and perpetuated a rich tradition of folklore.
Economics of SlaveryMyth: Slaveholders lost money and were more interested in status than moneymaking; slaves did little productive workFact: Slaves worked longer days, more days, and more of their life. The life expectancy of enslaved Africans in places like Barbados was a few decades due to the strain of labor.

Myth: Slavery was incompatible with urban life and factory technologyFact: Sugar mills were the first true factories in the world; slaves were widely used in cities and in various kinds of manufacturing and crafts.

Myth: Slaves engaged almost exclusively in unskilled brutish field labor.Fact: Much of the labor performed by slaves required high skill levels and careful, painstaking effort.Fact: Masters relied on slaves for skilled craftsmanship.

Religion

Myth: West and Central Africans received their first exposure to Christianity in the New World.Fact: Most Africans learned about Christianity as they learned about the European trade in enslaved Africans. A few Catholic missionary activities began in the central African kingdom of Kongo half a century before Columbus’s voyages of discovery and Kongo converted to Catholicism in 1491.

Myth: The Catholic Church did not tolerate the mixture of Catholicism with traditional African religions.Fact: In Kongo and in Latin America, the Church did tolerate the mixture of Catholicism with African religions, allowing Africans to retain their old cosmology, understanding of the universe, and the place of gods and other divine beings in the universe.

Myth: Before the Civil War, the Southern churches were highly segregated.Fact: In 1860, slave constituted about 26 percent of the Southern Baptist church membership.

Myth: Slave Christianity was essentially a “religion of docility.”Fact: Christianity was dual edged and marked by millennialist possibilities; whites could not prevent black preachers from turning Christianity into a source of self-respect and faith in deliverance.

Myth: Slaves were brainwashed and stunned into submission and rarely resisted slavery.Fact: Resistance took a variety of forms ranging from day-to-day resistance, economic bargaining, running away and maroonage, and outright rebellions

Slavery and World History

1. The most ancient civilizations–ancient Mesopotamia, Old Kingdom Egypt, and the budding civilization that formed in the Indus and Yangtze river valleys–all had some form of slavery present in their earliest years.
2. In none of these cultures did slaves constitute a large proportion of the population.
3. It was in classical Greece and Rome that the first true slave societies came into existence. From the 5th to the 3rd centuries b.c., perhaps a third to a half of Athens’s population consisted of slaves. Slaves constituted as much as 30 percent of Rome’s population.
4. England’s Domesday book of 1086 indicated that 10 percent of the population was enslaved.
5. Although slavery is often stigmatized as archaic and backward, slavery has been found in many of the most progressive societies.
6. Contrary to what many think, slavery never disappeared from medieval Europe. Domestic slavery persisted in Sicily, southern Italy, Russia, southern France, Spain, and elsewhere.

'Alik Shahadah is a master of the Documentary format and progressive African scholar. Shahadah uses film for social revolution. A multi-award winning recipient including the rare UNESCO award for his critically acclaimed film on slavery 500 Years Later.. He is best known for authoring works, which deal with African history, social justice, environmental issues, education and world peace. He states his primary motivation for making these films was being frustrated with "Tarzan's voice" as the central narrator in African stories. He noted that while scholarship challenges these issues, the common knowledge of the majority is generally unaltered, writing alone is not enough, the ultimate tool for re-education on a mass level is film

Art Lover ❤️ Sex Addict®™

Credo Mutwa was a Zulu-Kemetic priest born in 1921. He was the most famous of southern Africa's spiritual leaders to use African spirituality as a weapon against colonialism. He recently transitioned on the 25th of March 2020 just short of reaching the age of 99. He lived so long because he never took a single European "medication."
Mutwa, as the prefix of his name suggest, was a disciple of Mut, the original mother deity of the whole African continent; wife of Amen-Ra and mother of Khonsu. She was also known as Nomkhubulwane in Zulu.
The legendary Mutwa was a great leader who fought against European enslavement of history; he promoted the widely known southern African knowledge that their great stone ruins (known mostly from Great Zimbabwe but spread across southern Africa) are over 100,000 years old, of which he taught the Europoid South African scholar Michael Tellinger, author of "Temples of the African Gods." Unfortunately, Tellinger (not being a true African) could not understand Mutwa's typical African allegorical style of preaching spiritual science. Tellinger mistook his reference to extraterrestrial reptilians as literal!
However, Mutwa was referring to the reptilian part of our brain, called the R-complex. In the past, we were led by that part of our brain and had to rise above it. Throughout Africa is the legend of reptiles being worshipped and having to be transcended. Such as Bida in the Epic of Wagadu from the Ancient Ghana Empire. These are analogies for our worship of our lower self before we could rise and control the reptile part of our brain as Damballah-Wedo, Wadjet, or what Indians call Kundalini.
It was southern Africans who were the world's first masons. They brought the science of masonry to Kemet over 35,000 years ago when Africans from across the continent were gathering there to establish a fort to defeat Neanderthal invasion from Eurasia.
Now he joins the Shepsu in Amenta as an eternal star to be reincarnated thru our grandchildren. Asé.

Art Lover ❤️ Sex Addict®™

AFRICAN AMERICANS MUST UNDERSTAND, THAT IT WAS THEIR ANCESTORS WHO REALLY FREED THEM FROM SLAVERY.
THE AGGRESSIVE FIGHTING ABILITY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS SOLDIERS ON MANY BATTLEFIELDS DURING THE WAR; IS ONE OF THE PRIMARY REASONS WHY THE NORTHERN STATES WERE VICTORIOUS OVER THE CONFEDERATE STATES; AND SLAVERY CAME TO AN END.
BIOGRAPHERS NICOLAY AND HAY WROTE THAT: PRESIDENT LINCOLN TOOK MANY OPPORTUNITIES TO REMIND NORTHERNERS OF THE DEBT THEY OWED TO AFRICAN AMERICAN SOLDIERS.......
AND ACCORDING TO AN HISTORICAL RESEARCHER NAME JERRY YOUNG:"ABRAHAM LINCOLN SAID THAT WITHOUT THESE MEN WE COULD HAVE VERY EASILY LOST THE WAR.”
SEE THE ARTICLE BELOW:

Rising Star

Meet the Black Man Who Invented Mobile Refrigeration and Owns More Than 60 Patents

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Frederick Jones, an African American inventor and entrepreneur, is credited for his great invention of the portable refrigerator. He received over 60 patents for his other inventions. Jones managed to achieve all of these accomplishments while living in the era of Jim Crow laws and other propaganda used against Black Americans.

Jones was born on May 17, 1893 in Covington, Kentucky. At the early age of 9, he lost both his parents and he was then put under the care of a priest. He left school after 6th grade as he thought the strict educational system wasn't suited for him. By 11-years old, he returned to his hometown in Cincinnati where he taught himself mechanical engineering.

During World War I, Jones was deployed as an American soldier to France and he became known for his skills in fixing military gear. After the war, he made a living working at a repair shop, a steamship, at a hotel, and on railroads.

Around the same time, Jones started inventing things such as a radio transmitter for the Minnesota city radio station, a gasoline motor that could start on its own, as well as race cars that he used to compete in local race events. He designed them so well that they always beat the other racers, even an airplane once. He also built movie sound equipment that supported the advancement of the film industry in the late 1920's.

Jones became most popular for his invention of the first portable automatic refrigeration system for railroad cars and trucks that traveled long distances in 1935. It became beneficial in avoiding spoilage of food as well as blood and medicine during World War II. He eventually co-founded U.S. Thermo Control Company (later the Thermo King Corporation.

Throughout his life, Jones was awarded 61 patents, in which 40 were for refrigeration equipment, while others were for portable X-ray machines, sound equipment, and gasoline engines. He died from lung cancer in 1961, but he inspired a lot of Black people that they can do whatever they aspire to do - even when living in a rather unfair environment.

Rising Star

Songs we would never hear! Histories we would never know! Art we would never see! Because the European had the capacity to destroy and didn’t have the moral restraint not to.— Maulana Karenga

The word ”’Maafa”’ (also known as the African Holocaust) is derived from a Swahili word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. 1)The term today collectively refers to the Pan-African discourse of the 500 hundred years of suffering of people of African heritage through Slavery, imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, rape, oppression, invasions, and exploitation.

Songs we would never hear! Histories we would never know! Art we would never see! Because the European had the capacity to destroy and didn’t have the moral restraint not to.— Maulana Karenga

The word ”’Maafa”’ (also known as the African Holocaust) is derived from a Swahili word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. 1)The term today collectively refers to the Pan-African discourse of the 500 hundred years of suffering of people of African heritage through Slavery, imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, rape, oppression, invasions, and exploitation.

The African Holocaust is a pan-African discourse on the global historical and contemporary genocide against the mental and physical health of African people. The effects of this genocide impact all areas of African life: religion, heritage, tradition, culture, agency, self-determination, marriage, identity, rites of passage, and ethics. And finally acts to marginalize Africans from their historical trauma and historical glory. This study does not seek to promote a binary or Manichean history, but moreover a lens for looking at patterns of persecution from within an authentic African centered framework. [2][3]

The African Holocaust or Maafa, is a crime against humanity and is recognized as such by scholars, who have documented the primary culpability of mainly, but not limited to, Europeans in the ongoing Holocaust against African people. [note] Slavery corrupted and stripped both the enslaved and the slave master of their humanity and dignity.

The African Holocaust has represented an existential threat to the peoplehood and agency of African people for the past 500 Years of world history. Africa is the most exploited continent in the history of humanity; more human victims have been procured from Africa than all the continents of the world combined. The consequences of this drain in human and mineral resources is one of the major factors in the global condition of African people.

However, this history would be incomplete and distorted, without also reflecting on the acquiescence; collaboration, rape, genocide, slavery, corruption, and warfare that Africans, as free agents,[4] as members of nations and native religions, have also engaged in. [5] Moreover, it would be morally reprehensible to neglect the contemporary trade in Africa and across the globe.

A GREAT TRAGEDY

The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny, and it is useless for the innocent to try by reasoning to get justice, when the oppressor intends to be unjust–Aesop’s Fables

The African Holocaust is the greatest continuing tragedy the world has ever seen. It was also the most impacting social event in the history of humanity. Not only in terms of scale but also in terms of legacy and horror. It is a Holocaust which is constantly denied, mitigated and trivialized.

The Maafa reduced humans with culture and history to a people invisible from historical contribution; mere labor units, commodities to be traded. From this Holocaust/Maafa the modern racial-social hierarchy was born which continues to govern the lives of every living human where race continues to confer (or obstruct) privilege and opportunity.

And because the African Holocaust is rarely treated as a continuous history, worthy of an ongoing discourse, the inter-relations and the agents of this Holocaust escape treatment. It makes it easy to make people see slavery, colonialism, apartheid as divorced from one another. Treating them as isolated studies, often misses the pattern of white supremacy throughout African history.

And in the 21st century the legacy of enslavement manifest itself in the social-economic status of Africans globally. Without a doubt Africans (as well as Native Americans and Australians) globally constitute the most oppressed, most exploited, most downtrodden people on the planet; a fact that testifies to the untreated legacy of Slavery, colonialism and apartheid. Not only is this reality in the social-economic spectrum, it is also experienced in the academic and political value the Maafa receives compared to the Jewish genocide. While African people are told to “move on from slavery”, Jewish holocaust is a staple of World history.

White Supremacy, where “truth, and norms” are issues by White establishments. Yes, they also include some African authors, but the benchmark or system of verification(like the systemic racism which operates under the cover of neutrality on sites like Wikipedia, is white. Reliability of anything is still resting with White scholarship and their politics. And this is a serious challenge to African agency and anything authentic.

In its quest for certainty, Western philosophy continues to generate what it imagines to be colorless and genderless accounts of knowledge, reality, morality, and human nature.–Alison Baile

The authentic study of Africa is often masked with political or emotional objectives; whether these objectives are Islamaphobic, anti-African, European supremacy, Afrocentric, “Black” supremacy or a Zionist agenda [2]linguistic tone which takes away the humanity of African people by referring to enslaved people as “slaves” and “black African slaves.” It reaffirms Africans as history’s slave pool;mere commodities, black bodies without history and higher destiny. This orientalism is evident in most Eurocentric studies by celebrated white historians on African and Arab slavery. But murderers don’t get off by pleading to the judge that someone else committed an equally bad murder, or that the murder was less severe because the victim’s parents handed them the knife.

On the other side, almost every single European-run historical discourse, led by the likes of John Thornton, attempts to reduce the impact, severity and legacy of the African Holocaust. Normalization white-washes slavery into:

“Everyone did it; it is part of world history.”

“Africans sold Africans to Europeans so they are just as guilty.”

“Without African involvement they could be no slave trade(Thornton)”

While Thornton may be correct, it does not absolve the continued benefits Europeans have gained and continue to gain from enslavement of African people. No other nation still inherits the wealth of their former slaves like the West. If a young girl is sold into prostitution by her own parents, the pimp must still pay for the suffering he caused the young woman. He can’t simply say, ‘Her parents made a deal with me, so you should stop the blame game.'”[3]Afrocentrics and other pro-African groups play binary blame games, while denying African culpability and agency.

Their objective is to make Africans the victims, and even when Africans are accountable for horrendous acts, they still place responsibility outside of Africa (it was the foreign religions and culture). But this neglects and tramples African agency, because it reaffirms the child-like canard of African people: incapable, and impressionable. Africans are not impressionable children who are “influenced” by everything that blows into Africa. While this argument often comes in the box of “consciousness,” in reality this attitude of “they did this to us” only reaffirms Arab and European superiority; to have so much power to control every last action Africans have ever done.

And on both sides of the debate, in an attempt to hold onto that romantic notion of self, jump through hoops to explain away reality. However, we cannot escape that Africans, as full and uninfluenced people, did engage in the African Holocaust; and are fully, although not equally, responsible for their partnering with the Atlantic and Arab slave system. Because there was no opportunity, in the early days of the trade, to suggest that Africans were tricked or bewitched into supplying Europeans (unless we are suggesting African people are a child like race) so those few that agreed to this trade in flesh were active participants.

The European controlled slave trade was not some private venture divorced from church and state. That church and state was a representation of “the people.” It represented the wealth and security of Western nations. As such the vast majority of Western Europeans and their descendants globally profited from slavery—a privilege people of European ancestry still enjoy at the expense of African development. And yet some still suggest avoiding discussing slavery as to not hurt their feelings.

While Africans and Europeans were jointly involved in the Atlantic slave trade; it was Europe that dominated the connection, vastly enlarged (from a crack to a canyon) the slave trade, and continually turned it to European advantage and African disadvantage. Basil Davidson states that within both European and African institutions there were also differences, and these differences, however “minor,” created a decisive outcome, which allowed European total domination evolving into colonialism and today’s neocolonialism.

With neocolonialism came the proxy puppet African elites who are direct ideological descendants of the African slave trading elite. But the total percentage of involvement and profits from that involvement gained by Africans engaged in selling other Africans is infinitesimal. It accounts for maybe 1% of the billable slave hours in the working life of a first generation enslaved African. It accounts for 0% of the billable hours for the many generations of Africans enslaved on European owned plantations, and the years of exploitation after emancipation. How then are we calling it a partnership of equals?

[To] see Africans as partners implies equal terms and equal influence on the global and intercontinental processes of the trade…Africans had great influence on the continent itself, but they had no direct influence on the engines behind the trade in the capital firms, the shipping and insurance companies of Europe and America, or the plantation systems in Americas. They did not wield any influence on the building manufacturing centers of the West

As unethical as it sounds, no degree of slavery in Africa would have destroyed Africa as a continental political force. It is when African talent started being exported out of Africa, that African underdevelopment from a political, economic, and social perspective became an issue. This issue of emphasis creates a peculiarity that seems unique to Africa, but all over the world, in every single conflict you will find weak or greedy members of that community who side with oppression—why is Africa any different? What is true for the African is 100% true for the Jew. So the biggest manipulation is not so much in the facts, but in the weight or emphasis of “they sold each other.” Also, most enslaved people in the West were in that state for all of their lives by European process, not African.

Those who were captured in Africa were touched by the African component briefly– and never again in the history of their enslavement. African involvement, while shameful, was hardly a partnership in Holocaust, beyond the initial capture and sale. And Europeans also have this tradition of underplaying their role in direct capture. But it is a fact that in the early days, and especially in the later (peak) days of the slave system, Europeans directly procured captives. (Bailey 2005)

The distant Arab slave trade with its states in Zanzibar have long vanished from the economic-political landscape. But the wealth of Great Britain and France continue uninterrupted. The governments, churches, businesses, royal decree, that funded and approved slavery remain unaltered.140 million Africans in the Western Hemisphere, representing around 14% of the world’s population are the visible consequences of Western Slaving and this is not only a numbers issue,

There is no escaping African culpability in the “destruction” of Africa. The failure to form unity around spheres of interest when faced with a formidable foe is a failing Africa cannot escape. Greed and corruption continues to adversely poison the hope of Africa, even today. And no degree of historical revision can wash out or dilute aspects of African partnership in the African Holocaust.

But we should also balance the exception vs. the rule vs. a phenomena. [5]as this Diaspora also represent the absolute bottom of every social-economic graph. All of this is necessary to show the backdrop to the attitudes and motives for the “new” focus on Arabs. And when we look at the principle authors of this “new” study we see the hands of people like Bernard Lewis (an ardent orientalist, and Zionist) as the prime authority even Afrocentrics are reading.

Yes, people did sell their family into slavery, yes kings did invade and use other ethnic groups for a slave pool. But it is inaccurate to highlight this as the African norm (as Dr. Akurang-Parry says). Nor should we confuse a phenomena as the natural way in which African people lived for millennium. We should not make Africa a monolith, and ignore other forms of social inequity and violence in native African communities, which predate any influence of Arabs and Europeans. Africans, like people all over the world have the same human nature, which can be both creative and loving, as well as destructive and inhumane.

But it is utterly dishonest to compare the capitalist-driven actions of Western Europeans, with the mainly duress-driven actions of a community being forced to sell their neighbors (or even their own children) into slavery for fear of the entire family being sold. To compare these circumstances as equal is moral reprehensible. What happened in Africa was a Holocaust, and victims were not limited to those being shipped across the Atlantic to European plantations or the salt marshes of Iraq— A large percentage of the trauma was experienced inside of the slaving zones.

MOVE ON FROM SLAVERY

Slavery is a painful subject for both Europeans and Africans. It is natural for any humans to try and escape one’s conscience, so Europeans often tell Africans to “Moving on” From slavery. But what does this mean and what action should Africans take to “move on” as British Prime minister Cameron insisted?:

Don’t bring it up in polite White society

Do not use it as a political tool to remind Europeans of their sordid history

Lick your wounds in private

Do not include it in your educational system

Never lobby around it for reparations

Avoid publishing books about it

Close down the African Holocaust Society Website

And do not allow your children to discuss it

This is what “Moving on from slavery and colonialism” means. Now how do we move on from the very current that is institutional racism (connected to the legacy of slavery), or White supremacy (again connected to slavery) ? How do we move Africa out of the ongoing exploitation by the West? So Moving on means to close down all debate and fracture the African connection to the past. 100% perfect for those who exploited African labor to build the Western empire, 100% perfect to avoid dealing with the current responsibility of those who profited/profit from African exploitation.

It is strange that no one tells the victims of 9/11 or the Jewish Holocaust to “move on”. So anyone who suggest Africans “move on” from the past is guilty of trying to cover up their ancestors role in our destruction. And in criminal law, to cover up a crime is a crime. To block people from accessing their historical database is a crime against their human dignity. So this is why both those who enslaved Africans, and those today who suggest we forget about slavery are partners in the African Holocaust.

STUDYING AFRICA | TYPES OF ‘TRADE’

It was once believed that the Atlantic slave trade was a largely self-contained phenomenon, it is now acknowledged that this slave trade is part of a much wider picture, which includes traditional African slave systems and the Arab slave trade. At various stages in their history conflicted and complemented each other. There was also an evolution from one type of slavering into another; as happened inside of the African slave system where captives where a casual consequence of national warfare evolved into a reason for warfare.

We must identify the different levels of enslavement in the historical narrative of Africa. Some where client-supplier, others were consequences of the overspill from internal polities clashing. Although the internal African trade became the trade which procured captives for Europeans and also Arabs, it is a distinctive trade with unique features, and moreover distinctive consequences.

Economically the growth that should have been experienced in Africa, from African human resources, was experienced in the West – as opposed to in Africa. The primary African groups involved in procurement for European interest became particularly adept and brutal at the practice of enslavement and through the centuries developed a militaristic culture. Prime groups engaged in this were Oyo, Benin, Igala, Kaabu, Fante Confederacy, Asanteman, Dahomey, the Aro Confederacy and the Imbangala professional war bands. (“Atlantic Warfare”, Thornton) One key difference between Africans as agents for Europeans, and the domestic internal slavery was the level of brutality associated with procurement. The gradual abolition of slavery in European colonial empires during the 19th century industrialization era led to the decline of these African empires.

Why do we study the past? To learn from it and set up precedents for curbing patterns which produce inequity. And to reproduce patterns and habits that produce enlightenment and progress for all of the Earth (humanity and nature). Every doctor understands why the epidemiology is critical to modern medicine; prevention and cure rest on successful analysis of the problem.

Almost every incident of conquest involves a stronger technological people subdued and exploiting a “weaker” or less developed technological people. That is the one most profound observation and pattern we can grasp from history. The consequences of that conquest have never stopped, the reverberation is heard around the global in all areas of conflict. Understanding history, as Jared Diamond states, is more often the tool used to interrupt the negative outcome, than to repeat it.Slavery is not wrong because slavery is wrong. Slavery is wrong because of another higher human consideration — human rights.

Where human rights in our modern era are intolerant to the systems of oppression slavery perpetuated. It is the immorality of slavery, the contempt for humanity that is the focus of our issue with slavery and all its enduring side effects, one being aspects of modern racism. The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics, and genocide.

So Europeans did not enslave African people with the Bible in their White hands, or notions of ideological superiority, but because they had to power, born from the technological disparity between the two groups. The collision of advanced political, and technological advancements made them appear “superior.” The Bible in the hands of a weak stone age people would have had no sway over the iron producing people of the interiors of Africa. Their Guns, Germs and Steel played the decisive role in the outcome when these two civilizations clashed.

Power protects; sell or be sold, conquer or be conquered. If one village was buying guns and you were not…bad news for you. So had Africans, like the Japanese (11) taken control of the gun manufacturing process, as opposed to exclusively buyers of guns, there would be no way Europeans could sell damp gunpowder and trinkets in exchange for African captives or African resources. But nothing has changed because this is the exact dilemma Africa faces, perceptually dependent on everyone else for final goods (Motherland 2010). And to obtain these good requires an inequitable exchange of the continent’s resources with Europe or China for trinkets. So this technological disparity, which pre-dates the arrival of Europeans, still haunts Africa’s future.

Slavery today, as slavery then, has the common theme of weak vs. strong, rich vs. poor. (It knows no exceptions) That personality has never altered and every time there is a gross imbalance it is the breeding ground for all forms of exploitation. It then seems a correct approach would be also to deal with the breeding ground of slavery. It is far more than a Black people vs. White people debate. In Cameroon the “weaker” peoples are exploited by the “stronger” people. So this pattern of oppression’s commonality needs to be addressed. Garvey clearly articulated this when he said :

Slavery is a condition imposed upon individuals or races not sufficiently able to protect or defend themselves, and so long as a race or people expose themselves to the danger of being weak, no one can tell when they will be reduced to slavery–Marcus Garvey

All humans are the same: anyone cut with a knife will bleed, anyone left without cultural identitywill fit the Willy Lynch theoretical model. The only factor in the degree of impact is culture. This is why some people experience a Holocaust and come out even stronger than they went in. A Holocaust must therefore be looked at comparatively, depending on three key factors: the heat of the fire, duration, and their cultural integrity. Unfortunately where Africans are concern the fire, or nature of the Holocaust, was hot, the duration was long, and African cultural integrity, due to disunity, was weak.

THE OTHER

Islam vs. the other, or Christianity vs. the other, or even European vs. the other.

This is the history of human nature from time immoral. The other is in parenthesis in the Old Testament; thou shall not kill (members of my own tribe). It was with us in the beginning of humanity, and if not careful will follow us to the grave of humanity.

The Osu caste system in Nigeria and southern Cameroon, can be traced back to an indigenous religious belief system of the Igbo nation. Some Igbo traditionalists hold that the Osus are people historically owned by deities, and are therefore considered to be a ‘living sacrifice’, an outcaste, untouchable and sub-human. The was true in Ethiopia; the very name Falasha means (foreigners/exiles) was given to Ethiopian Jews by the Emperor Yeshaq in the 15th century.

According to the UN Sub-Commission: Caste systems exist in pockets in some African countries. It is found in parts of Sahelian Africa, particularly in certain West African communities, and among populations in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. Although significantly different in nature and scope, there are some common features between the caste systems of Africa and South Asia. Stigma is often attached to this problem, and as a consequence “low caste” communities in Africa suffer various forms of social exclusion and discrimination, particularly with regard to employment, political representation and inter-caste marriages. [12]

In some slave trading African societies, East, North and West, the conquest in the temporal was a mirror of a divine conquest. Zulu means “The people of the sky” vs. other people who are less “chosen” and because of that status were subject to a vicious campaign. “The Other” is a human problem, fanned by ignorance and binary accusations. And their is no global “other”, all are “your other” defined by each society. From the outside, the group accused of being “the other” is, more often than not, all the same subjective group.

The historical record must not be washed away, we must call the name of those who engaged in the apex of the trade to account for their historical genocide. But at the same time, balance must caution anyone of perceptually blaming Europeans and Arabs, while skipping the internal complexities, weakness and failures still plaguing African communities. Because it does not bring a complete solution to the roots of slavery and inequity; the roots of war and hate.

HOLOCAUST – CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

The events which transpired five thousand years ago; Five years ago or five minutes ago, have determined what will happen five minutes from now; five years From now or five thousand years from now. All history is a current event–John Henrik Clarke

The act of murder, torture, enslavement, and persecution is equal regardless of who, when or where. Killing 6 Jewish civilians is no different from killing 6 Palestinian civilians: The distinctive act of murder is equal. It does not become equal if that murder goes from 6 to 6 million. It is that act of “murder” multiplied by 6 million. Torturing someone, dehumanizing them, taking them from their home (kidnapping), raping them all constitute separate instances of human rights violation. And human rights is human rights regardless of if we are discussing 2011 or 1011, it has generally never been acceptable in human society to torture and rape another human being.

Slavery was not invented by Europeans or Arabs, Christians or Muslims, Romans or Persians, Slavery is the business of human societies. Some of those people engaging in slavery identified as Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Akan, Nigerian, British, Indian, and Chinese. Some existed in 500 BCE some in the 21st century. Almost all advanced societies, with capacity engaged in some form of bondage. So race, geography, religion, ethnicity and time are of no consideration in people’s propensity to engage in slavery.

Now the act of taking an African from their home by force and violence is a crime, and in that crime a minority of Africans played a major role. However, that is one set of crimes and each incident re-occurred over the centuries destabilizing local communities’ development potential.

And without the assistance of any Africans we then come to storing Africans in dungeons and subjecting them to all manner of unspeakable horrors, including rape, in places like Goree or El Mina. On board the ships, Africans were fed alive, as a form of terrorism, to man-eating sharks. All of this constitutes yet another set of human rights violations. Loading and packaging human beings on a ship like sardines and subjecting them to living and breathing in their own urine and excrement is another set of crimes against humanity (again a crime exclusive to Europe in the Atlantic system).

Taking them and selling them off like chattel is yet another crime, dehumanizing them and enslaving them on the plantation is yet another set of crimes against humanity. To disrupt the culture, names, language and religion of those captive people is yet another crime against humanity. To exploit to build the empires of the West for over 300 years; torture, persecute dehumanize them is yet another crime. To finally release them from their Holocaust to be subjects and victims of all forms of racism up until the 60’s is yet another crime. And finally to continue to enjoy the fruits of that legacy, deny and oppress them into the contemporary moment is yet another crime against humanity. And still we see every generation of African inheriting the terrible legacy of self-hate and potential inhibition created at that instance 500 Years ago in Africa.

Numbers (Quantity) and Duration and Nature (Quality of oppression) are three unique factors in the African Holocaust. There is no statute of limitation if the institutions that profited from slavery are today still in existence rich and better off for that terrible trade in flesh. It is only when we understand the African Holocaust in these terms that we realize what is unique about it. There are no comparisons in human history.

CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY

Often the emotion view of slavery sees racism as the principle motive for the Atlantic Slave Trade. However, the mere existence of a capitalist ideology will by default create degrees of servitude. Capitalism looks at numbers and has no moral consideration. It has a relentless dedication to reduce liabilities and increase profits. The numerical capitalist heaven is zero-expense. Slavery was capitalisms best system for achieving a number as close as possible to zero. In this cold calculation slavery was inevitable once new territories were found and sugar cane and other products added to the markets of Europe.

It has been often argued, by some scholars, that slavery did not end for moral reasons. There was no new awakening in the capitalist heart for the inequities which besieged the African slave. The profitability diminished and new alternatives such as sharecropping had brighter lights. It is in the shifting economics of industrialization that slavery as a system began to lose its shine. Again capitalism looked at the numbers and found that between; feeding, clothing and sheltering Africans, as well as quelling rebellions – it was far cheaper to end slavery. And with the rise of Western consumerism all of those ex-slaves became the new clients of their former slave masters.

LEGACY OF THE HOLOCAUST

Jewish people today are able to draw strength from their tragedy while the African-Diaspora still continue to be victims of their Holocaust.

The Jewish nightmare resonates so much that they have shared their pain beyond their cultural group: The image of suffering is iconized in the Jewish holocaust. We can see a film such as “Freedom Writers” where mischievous “ethnic minority” teens are told a Jewish story as an example of “real” suffering.” Why would African-Americans with the most tragic history in America (equaled only by the Native American Holocaust) need to look to European Jews for a story of tragedy?

The answer is simple African-Americans are not agents of these stories which impose themselves at the expense of the African narrative. Even in South Africa (which has no history of Nazi extermination) you will find a Jewish holocaust museum in every major city. Thats not the fault of any Jew, and we must respect their dedication to their holocaust study. But where is the African Holocaust museums? Where is the great monuments built to honor the millions of Africans whose bodies lie at the bottom of the Atlantic? Where is the Pan-African centers for teaching the legacy of Du Bois, Garvey and Malcolm? That speaks only to a mental defect which is the greatest legacy of our African Holocaust.

SLAVERY AS AN EXCUSE FOR EVERYTHING

Many, especially non-Africans have accused some African people of using slavery as an excuse for everything negative. But to be fair there is a lot to be blamed for slavery, its legacy is very real. So while this issue is very true the African must look at this world as a race.The legacy of slavery creates a lot of madness in our community, but do we use that as an excuse? This is the critical question. Gravity holds a rocket on the ground, but do rock engineers use that as an excuse to stay on the ground? While acknowledging the obstacle of gravity they work day and night to escape its pull.

Personal Note: So there is a race, you have to run it or not run it. That is the only options available. Be part of this civilization or be a victim of this civilization. If you opt out—as many have—sitting down means the Chinese come and own your country, taking everything colonialism left behind which most African leaders still squander.

So you can sit down if you want, but do not complain when your water and oil are owned by multinationals. Now it is 100% that we come from the legacy of slavery, that comes as default, you still (with this disadvantage) have to run the same race with the Europeans, Arabs, Turks, Indians and Chinese.

Everyone except the Europeans have some sort of handicap. Maybe the Arabs are entering the race with a broken arm, maybe the Chinese only a broken finger, maybe Africans are the most damaged in the race with no arms at all and myopic vision— but you still must find a way of running that race and being victorious. That is what life handed you. You cannot sit it out and say mental slavery made me late for the start, or the legacy of slavery slowed me down. That might well explain your handicap, but it is of no consequences to the finish line. In short the world does not care about losers and if Africans do not find a way the legacy of slavery will be extended until the Sun consumes the Earth. Its a choice, run or make excuses.

SLAVERY IN AFRICA

African slavery is hardly to be praised. But it was far different from plantation or mining slavery in the Americas, which was lifelong, morally crippling, destructive of family ties, without hope of any future. African slavery lacked two elements that made American slavery the most cruel form of slavery in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, Black was slave. –Howard Zinn

Most European reports of slavery throughout Africa in the 1600s and beyond are not reliable sources because they often conflated various forms of servitude as equal to chattel slavery.[11] And this also was a problem with the entire history of Africa from a Western point of view in all areas; religion, culture, economic and even warfare (Thornton). Africa made sense exclusively in terms already observed in the European worldview–even if they were totally different. So slavery had no nuance, it was slavery as Europeans practiced it. Warfare as Europeans practiced it, religion lost all nuance it was just paganism.

The line that defines what is and isn’t slavery is blurred and there is no secret that when ethnic groups and nationalities fought in wars the vanquished where given into a system of subservience to the victors: askew rules of war. However, let not the word “slavery” allow an analogue to what happened on the plantations of Jamaica, Brazil and America.

The limits of language take radically different systems, Atlantic slavery and Vassalship in Africa, and subject them to the same treatment because they share the same abstract word “slave.” In Africa there were no fields filled with men and women tolling away to the crack of a whip. There was no place where so-called slaves outnumbered their enslavers. Chattel Slavery did not exist within Africa but serfdom, servitude or vassalship did, as it did in most of Europe and the rest of the world. In addition, this vassalship was scattered and infrequent; it was never the commerce of the land. Most non-free people could amass wealth and upward mobility was very frequent.

Some, as in the case of Ali Kolon ascended the ranks to become rulers. Many enslaved people were employed in high government office with virtually no restrictions on their native language, religion etc. Naturally, it suits the people who profited from slavery to make the world think that slavery was the fault of Africans, and that slavery was good for Africa and natural to Africans.

The most brutal phase of enslavement came into play when enslaved people started to become transported outside of their local zones to distant locations (inside of Africa or outside of Africa). This happened as greater centralized African and later Arab powers came to the table. They had the power to seek captives in distant slave pools, and the lust to source free labor to expand their national objectives. The transportation over long distances increase mortality. The rise of larger civilizations meant specialization became more frequent, the dedicated solider, the merchant, and the professional slaver.

NEW RESEARCH | SLAVERY UNIQUE TO NATION STATES

New research reveals that up until the 15th century, most of the world was still under band and tribal groupings. (Diamond, 2005) Africa was no different, as a majority of the continent, like the majority of most continents, were not in organized states. Only states have use for slavery, it is not a feature of hunter gather society which does not have the specialization to accommodate captives. Tribal groupings also rarely have slavery. It would therefore be safe to say African slavery was confined to states, and kingdoms. It was not an ubiquitous reality.

NUMBERS LOST

Numbers lost in any tragedy is always political and we must approach this controversial subject from a different angle. People seem very fascinated with numbers, almost like boasting rights and we must remember numbers are only part of the great tragedy; the horror of being enslaved as a race for 300 years and the consequences of that enslavement need just as much passion in debate circles.

But we start the discussion of numbers enslaved or lost to slavery by an appreciation of what we know, what we might know, and what we will never know. We also have to consider the complexity of the challenge when discussing “numbers lost.”

While traditional studies often focus on official French and British records of how many Africans arrived in the “New World” these studies neglect the death from raids, the fatalities on-board the ships, introduced European diseases, the victims from the consequences of enslavement,

and the trauma of refugees displaced by slaving activities. The numbers of arrivals also neglects the volume of Africans who arrived via pirate ships who for obvious reasons wouldn’t’ have kept records. In her book Dreams of Africa in Alabama, Sylviane Diouf details the lives of the enslaved Africans to be brought to the U.S. even after emancipation. Most of this history is neglected in calculating numbers of Africans stolen into slavery.

In the centuries of death that surrounded slavery some suggest that a few kings got rich or life in Africa was so horrid that being brought to slave plantations was a progressive life style change. (See African Kingdoms for Africa prior to slavery) If 12-15 million Africans arrived in the New World. Over 10 million died as direct consequences of the Atlantic slave trade alone. But no one knows the exact number. An often-neglected study within history is the value of population demographics as a function of time. 30 million people 500 years ago is not equivalent to 30 million people today because 30 million as a percentage of the world population represented 500 years ago is far greater than what it represents today.

We must also realize the percentage of Africans in a state of slavery might have meant that 40% of all Africans alive were enslaved at any given period in the last 300 years. In short this means that African, by a landmark, are the most enslaved people in the history of humanity; by any and all definitions of slavery. It is estimated that by the height of the Transatlantic slave trade the population of Africa unlike the rest of the World had stagnated by 50%.. See How Europe underdeveloped Africa. “Walter Rodney”

Not only was Transatlantic Slavery of demographic significance, in the aggregate population losses but also in the profound changes to settlement patterns, epidemiological exposure and reproductive and social-economic development potential. (Shahadah) Thus Africa’s development potential was being experienced outside of Africa, as opposed to inside Africa. This was perhaps the most profound destructive factor to the development of Africa. Systems of enslavement inside of Africa never underdeveloped the continent, while the Transatlantic Slave trade did at the same time enriching Europe.

Because if 12 million arrived how many generations from that 12 million were subjected to slavery? 140 million Africans in the Western Hemisphere, most of them the direct consequence of the Atlantic Slave Trade. So now consider 350 years of slavery how many African generations were enslaved, how many people died via that horrid process of enslavement? These are the new questions which must be attached to the old study of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

SOURCES ON DEATH TOLL FROM SLAVERY

Everyone with a PhD and not, has had a crack at the numbers lost to the Atlantic Slave system. In American Holocaust (1992), David Stannard estimates that some 30 to 60 million Africans died being enslaved. He claims a 50% mortality rate among new slaves while being gathered and held in Africa, a 10% mortality among the survivors while crossing the ocean, and another 50% mortality rate in the first “seasoning” phase of slave labor. Overall, he estimates a 75-80% mortality rate in transit.

In “The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust” (Is the Holocaust Unique, A. Greebaum, ed., 1996), Seymour Drescher estimates that 21M were enslaved, 1700-1850, of which 7M remained in slavery inside Africa. 4M died “as a direct result of enslavement”. Of the 12M shipped to America, 15%, or 2M more, died in the Middle Passage and seasoning year.

Jan Rogozinski, A Brief History of the Caribbean (1994): “[A]s many as eight million Africans may have died in order to bring four million slaves to the Caribbean islands.”
In The Slave Trade, Hugh Thomas estimates that 13M left African ports, and 11,328,000 arrived. Here are a few other numbers from Thomas:

Rummel estimates a total death toll of 17,267,000 African slaves (1451-1870)

Orient: 2,400,000 dead

Captives staying in Africa: 1,200,000 dead

Enslaved going to New World: 13,667,000 dead

Fredric Wertham claims that 150,000,000 Africans died of the slave trade. Looking at all the speculations on demographic impact on Africa we can estimate that at bear minimum 35% of those enslaved in Africa died before reaching the slave ships. Between these extreme possibilities the most likely mortality rate is 62%.

In terms of absolute numbers, the lowest possible is 6 million. If we assume the absolute worst, a death toll as high as 60 million is at the very edge of possibility (including indirect death, epidemiological exposure, etc.; however, the likeliest number of deaths would fall somewhere from 15 to 20 million.[ref]

If 5 million slaves were shipped in the 18th Century (the busiest century, see Hugh Thomas, above), then the 18th Century death toll could be around 8.1 million. (=5/11*17.8)
And what is often neglected, deliberately so, that these numbers are only the dead among the first generation of enslaved Africans brought from Africa. Subsequent generations would contribute additional unnatural deaths..[ref]

Muhammad Shareef: The image is always given that the Africans themselves acquiesce to the process of slavery. But you’ll find that in West Africa there was a polity or a political entity that existed that guaranteed security right across West Africa and that was the Songhai Empire. We saw Malik Sy in the 16th Century as well, and men like Abdul Qadeer and Cherno Sulayman Kaba, these men who waged resistance in what is known as Futa Toro and Futa Jalon. Also the campaigns of Nasr al-Din’s [Nasser Uddin] (Tubenan movement) anti-slavery and Western imposition galvanized Africans in the region in the late 17th century.

There was Nzinga and the Southern areas of Africa as well that was fighting its resistance against European invasion. All the way up until the 17th Century men like Umar Tall, Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodiod and Umar Futi as well as Ahmed Lobo. And then we had the courageous wars, which took place in 1884 under the armies of Muhammad Ahmed, Ibn Abdullahi of the Sudan as well as Muhammad Abdullahi al Hassan of Somalia. And then we had in 1903 finally, the wars that took place between the Sokoto Empire.

Probably about one in ten slaving voyages experienced major rebellions, of which the attempts to control increased the costs of a slave voyage to the point where far fewer slaves entered the traffic than would have been the case without resistance. In addition, vessels from some regions on the coast appear to have been more prone to experience slave uprisings than those from other regions. So the Africans did not acquiesce colonialism, nor did they acquiesce towards slavery, they fought at every point. The image of Europeans as the liberators of African (as if Africans just waited by the river watching the clouds go by) is part of the take-away from Africans as agents. And in fact when the slaves were landing in the Western hemisphere in Bahia Brazil you saw the emergence of jihad movements.

You saw the emergence of men like Muhammad Sambo who led a two-month jihad in the Louisiana territories in North America. Men like Nat Turner and other men who refused to submit to slavery. The Haitian Revolution as well. Men like Macantow. So The Africans never acquiesce to slavery in fact we can say this year that the whole concept of freedom that the American thirteen colonies had, they got that concept of freedom and liberty from the African resistance movement that took place in the Western Hemisphere.”

What did the Slave Master learn from Bahia et al? That it was critical to separate the African (the one who just arrived with a memory of home) from the conditioned slave (the one born into enslavement). Teaching the conditioned slave to hate anything African, anyone who remembers another home is dangerous to the designs of slavery.

If any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good requires that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away– Samuel A. Cartwright

Drapetomania was a supposed mental illness described by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851 that caused African slaves to flee captivity. So ingrained was the notion of Africans only purpose being in the capacity as slaves, it was seen as unnatural and a sickness that would cause them to want to escape slavery. And today we must ask what has really changed? Africans in America seeking to rename their children in the African traditions, or seek African ways of life, African religions, or African culture, are seen as “confused.”

WHO SOLD US OUT

The fact of the dual involvement of Europeans and Africans in the slave trade did not imply equal partnership, but rather parallel lines of activity originating from different cultural and political space–Anne C. Bailey

In popular circles there is a “Who sold us into slavery?” debate that has been raging for years. It however has done little to advance a pure understanding of the African reality. It has always been used to divide African loyalty, and foster further distrust in Pan-African communities: by targeting certain countries, ethnic groups or religious groups. If African people are to heal and come to terms, and hence grow and reach a higher potential, it is impossible to avoid this issue for it will stymie Pan-African development. Understanding this notion of “Selling out” is critical aspect of the African Holocaust.

Now who did the “selling out” is not a binary Diaspora vs Continental issue. The “selling out” personality was on the boats that carried Africans to the New World, it was on the plantations, it followed its way into current leadership in Africa and the America’s: It lives in the heart of all those who try to fragment Africans by location, tribe and religion. It creates distrust and suspicion around great works, and leads Africans into nothingness rather than glory. It tries to suggest patterns of “selling out” to create distrust to further the political agenda of certain groups: “Oh it was the Christians that sold us out.” But the historical record clears both Islam and Christianityas the primary agent involved in “selling out” Africans to the Atlantic or even Arab slave trade. So what we are left with is the 100% agency of African people: Africans as free people, uninfluenced doing Holocaust.

Ethnic groups who may have engaged in selling other groups, at later stages as the system got out of control, may have themselves been taken to the New World. So there is zero point in binary Diaspora vs Continent blame games. It is impossible to point to West Africa and say “they sold us out”. It was a human personality that betrayed truth and justice when under duress, there is a more worrying and insidious human personality of greed and myopic ambition that has found its way through history into the current African leadership, that sells it resources and condemns its people to poverty to service Western designs, which reward this betrayal with trinkets.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Who sold Africa out is the personality of greed and selfishness, and moreover disunity. The failure of African people to purge the “devil” within. It is not the people of Ghana, or the people of Nigeria, The Muslims, or the Christian converts, that was the sole culprit, because this generalization does not account for the traitors on the plantations of Louisiana. It does not account for the overseers who made deals to usurp African rebellion. And it goes soft in dealing with the flaws inside of ATR that were the biggest justification for enslavement. It also generalizes targeted African groups who remained in Africa but were equal victims of enslavement.

WHY AFRICANS

A lot of research has revealed that Africans as a group were suitable for enslavement due to physical endurance; resistance to disease, the advantages of procuring large numbers from slave pools. But there was something more profound than that, that made Africans ripe for enslavement. A failure of people of Africa to form defenses around spheres of interest. And that started, for what ever reason, because of a failure to understand continental interest above national interest. And this is tied hard and fast to notions of identity. Through no fault of African people in antiquity, since they had no reason then to have a Pan-African identity. However it is certainly an ongoing issue in Africa today, where blame can be laid squarely with contemporary Africans and no one else.

What Africans are still not getting, is, never let “internal” squabbles or confusions around difference (religious, ethnic, political, etc), allow a foreign aggression or agendas in Africa: Some term this divide and conquer, but steps to counter it are fleeting, especially when those that advocate unity are also busy causing disunity. So still the lessons of history have not be learned The failure to have a clear hierarchy of agendas allowed the African Holocaust. The African Holocaust affected all Africans, and required all Africans to close ranks around this issue. However. the issue of a pan-African concern was secondary, or non-existent to a “tribal” concern. The myopic acceptance of partnerships with Europe to rid one of a local enemy still work then and now in African politics. And even with hindsight this pattern of divide and rule is stated, but not fully understood. Africans will always have to deal with each other and conflict is inevitable, but in the hierarchy of interest, defense of the Motherland today must reign supreme.

AFRICAN IDENTITY IN ATLANTIC AFRICA

The viewpoint that “Africans” enslaved “Africans” is obfuscating if not troubling. The deployment of “African” in African history tends to coalesce into obscurantist constructions of identities that allow scholars, for instance, to subtly call into question the humanity of “all” Africans. Whenever Asante rulers sold non-Asantes into slavery, they did not construct it in terms of Africans selling fellow Africans. They saw the victims for what they were, for instance, as Akuapems, without categorizing them as fellow Africans. Equally, when Christian Scandinavians and Russians sold war captives to the Islamic people of the Abbasid Empire, they didn’t think that they were placing fellow Europeans into slavery. This lazy categorizing homogenizes Africans and has become a part of the methodology of African history; not surprisingly, the Western media’s cottage industry on Africa has tapped into it to frame Africans in inchoate generalities allowing the media to describe local crisis in one African state as “African” problem – Dr. Akurang-Parry, Ending the Slavery Blame, Ghana Web

When we study the dilemma which created a supply of slaves for the Western markets we see that the primary process was warring Africans. While some historians consider these merely “Slave Raids” it can be shown that casualties would have been experienced on both sides and thus making such activities more akin to warfare. Even if that warfare was against a “weaker” nation who served as a target group for procuring captives. The long standing temptation is to paint all these groups as African fighting Africans. However, in this historical period there was no African identity. People in 15th century Africa never heard of “Black people” as an identity.

While they had knowledge of self from an internal perspective, that knowledge of self lacked a relationship to other African groups in the broader sense, especially when confronted with the arrival of Europeans. And that is key because being proud to be Zulu, for example, but seeing a Xhosa as different is a narrow understanding of ‘self.’ And this failure made it easy for identities, whether ethnic or national, to be used as a opportunity for exploitation. And this is not unique to Africa, the same thing happened everywhere the European went in his expansion where he met different ethnic groups.

Perhaps this is also the largest factor which added the European interest in Africa, lack of a singular identity. The Aro Confederacy and the Imbangala cult, all had strict conceptions of what made an individual eligible for enslavement. Among such criteria were constructions of gender, definitions of criminal behavior (which expanded and corrupted as demand increased), and conventions for dealing with prisoners of war. The Serer for example had a policy of not keeping their enemies as slaves, so they killed them. (Martin Klein) While in other communities various regulations govern their POW. All of this was never static as duress increased from the consequences of the Atlantic slave machine.

Modern Slavery is fundamentally an economic phenomenon. Throughout history, slavery has existed where it has been economically worthwhile to those in power. The principal example in modern times is the U.S. South. It is preposterous and a historical denial to say that slavery did not significantly build the West. Obviously the likes of John Thornton are self-serving and protecting the wealth of the West by denying and spinning the contributions gained from slavery. There was not only direct monetary reward from holding slaves to do work on a plantation. Enslaved people also allowed their captors “free hands” to pursue activities which further enriched the West.

Nearly 4 million enslaved Africans with a market value of close to $4 billion lived in the U.S. just before the Civil War. Masters enjoyed rates of return on slaves comparable to those on other assets; cotton consumers, insurance companies, and industrial enterprises benefited from slavery as well. Such valuable property required rules to protect it,

and the institutional practices surrounding slavery display a sophistication that rivals modern-day law and business. (100 trillion dollars, based on 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865, with a compounded interest of 6% (and that is only for the USA),

The currency used in the African economic system of was the Okpoho (anillas are penannular armlets, mostly in bronze or copper). The word comes from the Igbo language known to in Spanish as Manillas.

Masters profited from reproduction as well as production. Southern planters encouraged slaves to have large families because U.S. slaves lived long enough — unlike those elsewhere in the New World — to generate more revenue than cost over their lifetimes. But researchers have found little evidence of slave breeding; instead, masters encouraged slaves to live in nuclear or extended families for stability. Lest one think sentimentality triumphed on the Southern plantation, one need only recall the willingness of most masters to sell if the bottom line was attractive enough.

See Also: Ideology versus the tyranny of paradigm : historians and the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on African societies. (J E Inikori)

COMPANIES WHO PROFITED FROM SLAVERY

Investment banks Brown Bros. Harriman and Lehman Bros. Railroads Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National. Textile maker WestPoint Stevens. Newspaper publishers Knight Ridder, Tribune, Media General, Advance Publications, E.W. Scripps and Gannett, parent and publisher of USA TODAY. 850 The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad, part of CSX today, paid slave owners $30 to $150 apiece to rent slaves for a year. Price in 1850: $150 In today’s dollars: $3,379 1856 The Mobile & Girard, now part of Norfolk Southern, offered slaveholders $180 apiece for slaves they would rent to the railroad for one year. 1856: $180 Today: $3,737 1859 The Central of Georgia, a Norfolk Southern line today, valued its slaves at $31,303. 1859: $31,303 Today: $663,033 1865 The Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, today part of CSX, placed a value of $128,773 on the slaves it lost as a result of emancipation at the conclusion of the Civil War. 1865: $128,773 Today: $1.4 million 1865 The Mobile & Ohio, now part of Canadian National, valued slaves lost to the war and emancipation at $199,691. 1865: $199,691 Today: $2.2 million. Sources: Economic History Services, USA TODAY research The list of corporations tied to slavery is likely to grow. Eventually, it could include energy companies that once used slaves to lay oil lines beneath Southern cities, mining companies whose slaves dug for coal and salt, tobacco marketers that relied on slaves to cultivate and cure tobacco.

Slavery’s long shadow also could fall over some of Europe’s oldest financial houses, which were leading financiers of the antebellum cotton trade. Lloyd’s of London, the giant insurance marketplace, could become a target because member brokerages are believed to have insured ships that brought slaves from Africa to the USA and cotton from the South to mills in New England and Britain.

REPARATIONS DEBATE

The United States owes African-Americans over $100 trillion in reparations, based on 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865, with a compounded interest of 6%. Africans in America today have been enduring struggles of discrimination, lynchings, indentured servitude, high imprisonment rates from disproportionate bias sentencing, sold to the highest sugar cane and sharecropper plantation owners and the historical impact that slavery had on African American even today, that lost of wealth in inheritance, land, pay, history, culture, family names.

When it comes to the Jews the flexibility of justice twist and turns to explain why Jews deserve compensation but Africans do not. Laws are used to obfuscate and blur issues. Broken analogues are made “If we paid everyone for every wrong in history where would it end?” There is however no statute of limitations on an ongoing Holocaust which impacts Africans the world over. It is not a historical event like when Rome sacked Greece; confined to ancient history. After the WW2, until now, Germany is sentenced to pay reparations even to grandchildren of the victims of the Jewish Holocaust.

As Boyce Watkins in response to Henry Louis Gates controversial remarks: “If a young girl is sold into prostitution by her own parents, the pimp must still pay for the suffering he caused the young woman. He can’t simply say, “Her parents made a deal with me, so you should stop the blame game…I am not sure why Gates has gone out of his way to assuage white guilt in America. I hope that’s not the price a Black man must pay in order to write an op-ed in the New York Times.”

There is no escaping African culpability in the Atlantic slave trade. However, the principle benefactor was clearly European nations. Also African participation in the 300 year old system was for but a blink of an eye. How could it be possible to hold both equally guilty? The person that sells the gun is guilty for that moment, but the person that uses it to kill for years is clearly at a different level of criminality.

Also, most enslaved people in the West were in that state for all of their lives by European process, not African. Those who were captured in Africa were touched by the African component briefly– and never again in the history of their enslavement. African involvement, while shameful, was was hardly a partnership in Holocaust, beyond the initial capture and sale.

And while the institutions of Arabia and Zanzibar that have profited from slavery have long vanished from our era, those in Europe still remain. They therefore have inherited both the profit and the lost of their trade in human flesh. And the victims of this horror are exclusively African. Therefore those victims have the right to forgive those whom they chose and bring charges against those they deem key persecutors of crimes against humanity.

It is not appropriate for the principle culprit to point fingers and say “I didn’t act alone.” Each will be judged according to the level of crime and the profits they derived from the crime. It is actually even part of European law; no court gives a lesser sentence to each individual because they happen to act in a group. Africans can therefore (without suggestion or help from Whites) deal with those African nations and kings who profited from slavery as they see fit.

REPARATIONS MEANS REPAIR

Reparations means repair. And that repair has to last every subsequent generation to come. When you go and buy a BMW with the “reparations check” what will that repair? Apart from BMW USA sales? So repair means things like University education — for free, for those willing (a critical component in repair to engage a persons own healing processes).

After all this time the general public still frames the debate in terms of a personal cash windfall, a check in the post. We (Africans) do it because we sometimes do not realize repair, the Holocaust and lack of full conscious means a corruption of the holistic understanding of repair and healing. The institutions destroyed by slavery must be rebuilt so that the people, for every generation to come, can rebuild themselves and their self worth.

Personal Message: Now the crime against our ancestors is an open wound. And we cannot rest until there is justice. But there is a justice we can do for self. Do not be dis-empowered, do not be uneducated and do not be economically weak, do not destroy family and do not disunite. Let those who died for Africa know that we escaped the shackles of slavery. But every time we drop out of school, do crime, disrespect our history and our culture we are doing an injustice to their memory. We are confirming the legacy of slavery.

SLAVERY AS A PENAL SYSTEM

Today there is an overemphasis on the word ‘slavery’ where slavery means the involuntary removal of an individual’s freedom. But the restriction of degrees of freedom is an ongoing aspect of human societies; where if members of a given society commit undesirable acts (not paying tax, adultery, treason, terrorism, etc) then systems were designed to curb the freedom of these individuals. So today America calls it the Criminal Justice System, history calls it Slavery. And in America’s system Africans are again targeted and taken out of the voting process and the competitive job process. So while this is not chattel slavery it is akin to the broader social slavery seen in history.

A judicial process was in place throughout most of Africa to preserve the law of the land; resources were such that large expensive industrial complexes were not viable. The Transatlantic Slave system distinguished itself because there was no crime on the part of the victims, simply being of African ethnic origin was the “crime.” Moreover the inhumanity and absolute debasement of the human being and then the subsequent legacy of this system which still exist and still creates privilege and opportunity for the majority of European descendants.

SLAVERY AND RELIGION

Religion is not the opium of the masses but religion must be used as an arm by the revolutionary forces–Kwame Ture

There is not one major indigenous African faith (that engaged in slavery) that had an issue with slavery, not one African native religion had principles that denounced slavery. Between the most aggressive slavers in West Africa such as Oyo, Benin, Igala, Kaabu, Asanteman, Dahomey, the Aro Confederacy – none of them Christian or Muslim.

None of them had principle objections to slavery. Therefore, the challenge which is posed to Islam and Christianity for having a tolerance for slavery is also true for the religions native to Africa. The only true difference between Islam and Christianity and indigenous faith is power. They had more power to destroy and had the added side-effect of carrying the culture of the conquering party: may that party be Arab, European, or another African group (see Songhai and Mali).

And today the old urban legend of religion and oppression is invalid. The new tools of oppression hide themselves in western democracy. And in the Trojan horse of democracy are the soldiers of the free market, globalization and debt. False focus on religion is a death sentence, like worrying about a spider when a lion is about to pounce.

The African Holocaust is also sadly not confined to history or to external influences. Darfur, the Congo, Sierra Leon and Rwanda are testimony to some of the horrors today. And although the legacy of Colonialism is clearly at the root of these problems it would be immoral not to see that Africans, like everyone else, are capable of unspeakable brutality. Just as in the European-European Holocaust during WW2.

Modern slavery in Africa can be seen as a continuation or outgrowth of slave-trading practices in the past. Africans have stepped into the boots and habits of the retreating colonizers. Forced labor was used to an overwhelming extent in King Leopold’s Congo Free State and on Portuguese plantations of Cape Verde and San Tome. But the majority factor is abject poverty, if the poverty is fixed it will automatically fix the slavery.

In Sudan and Mauritania and parts of Mali and Chad the slavery vacated by the abolition of what is called Arab slavery still continue in pockets of the country (explained in the video by Ali Mazrui). It is often cited that the Arab slave trade is still an ongoing activity, especially in places such as Sudan and Mauritania. And this is true, despite it being legally outlawed. But what is not mentioned is slavery goes on all over the world. 27 million people are trapped in some form of modern slavery may it be white sex slaves in Israel and Eastern Europe, Child slavery in Ghana, ritual slavery in South Africa.

PROBLEM IDENTIFYING SLAVERY

Another issue with 21st century slavery is it is easy to lose the word “slavery” in the linguistic technicality of what is and what is not not slavery. The lines are blurred and in some cases it is hard to determine if it is a human rights issue or a labor rights issue: A case of bad labor rights regarding how people are treated by their employers. Does it stop being slavery if someone is paid $1 a week? And what is the definition of paid, as payment can be in exchange for food and board. Then the only consideration is “freedom,” but freedom in itself is problematic. Are you free to leave your masters home when you have no family, shelter or security outside of their walls? Clearly people can leave but by doing so they put themselves in greater harm. So again “freedom” is a matter of perspective.

MODERN SLAVERY TODAY

Today in the Congo the indigenous people are usually victims of their Bantu neighbors, who have replaced the positions once held by Europeans. Ethnic hatred against vulnerable groups such as the so-called Pygmies (Bayaka) is neglected because it is not as sensational as Darfur or Rwanda. But these people are dehumanized and treated as 2nd class citizens by the Bantu Settlers. The uncomfortable reality is an aspect of the African Holocaust has to be ‘self-inflicted’ horrors which cannot be escaped via the smooth language of evasion.

Sex slavery is a major problem in South Africa. Women seeking refugee status in South Africa from other African countries are trafficked by other refugees. An estimated 1000 Mozambican girls are trafficked to Johannesburg each year and sold as sex slaves or as wives to the Mozambican mine workers. When identified by police in South Africa victims of trafficking are deported as illegal immigrants with no treatment for being victims of sex slavery. Victims are afraid of law enforcement and do not trust the police to assist them. South Africa shares borders with Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland. It has 72 official ports of entry “and a number of unofficial ports of entry where people come in and out without being detected” along it’s 5 000km-long land borderline. The problem of porous borders is compounded by the lack of adequately trained employees, resulting in few police officials controlling large portions of the country’s coastline.

Religious Slavery ( Trokosi ) in modern Ghana is the continuing tradition of giving of virgin girls to the gods for religious atonement or payment for services. This was part of many ancient religions in this region with some connection to Vodun practices. In West Africa the practice has gone on for at least several hundred years. Similar practices using similar terminology were found in the royal court in the 18th and 19th centuries. Wives, slaves, and in fact all persons connected with the royal palace of Dahomey were called “ahosi”, from “aho” meaning “king”, and “si” meaning “dependent” or “subordinate.”

In Ethiopia, children are trafficked into prostitution, to provide cheap or unpaid labor, and to work as domestic servants or beggars.

The only permanent solution is to eliminate the conditions that perpetuate Modern slavery – poverty. People movements is largely driven by either conflict or poverty, both lead to conditions which foster modern slavery. Tackling just the visible head, as many NGOs are doing, leaves room for the roots to keep recreating the problem.

MAAFA OR HOLOCAUST

The term Maafa and African Holocaust express identical ideas. What is true for one is true for the other. They are interchangeable. But the purpose of these two terms is different, Maafa is the African term to self-describe the African Holocaust. The term African Holocaust is the English term to create an instant understanding of the gravity of what this term means to an English speaking audience who are familiar with the horrors the world “holocaust” invoke. Just like the Jews have Ha-Shoah and Jewish Holocaust. No one owns the word Holocaust, and if someone did, it is certainly not Jewish people. It is not a Hebrew or Yiddish word, and was not created to describe their historical experience. Like all words in English, meanings and applications change politically. If there is a copyright on words, well why stop with Holocaust?

Slavery Fact Sheets

Geography
1. Enslaved Africans came primarily from a region stretching from the Senegal River in northern Africa to Angola in the South.
2. Europeans divided this stretch of land into five coasts:

Upper Guinea Coast: The area delineated by the Senegal and Gambia Rivers

Ivory (or Kwa Kwa or Windward) Coast:Central Liberia

Lower Guinea Coast: Divided into the Gold Coast on the west (Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana), the Slave Coast (Togo, Benin, and western Nigeria), and the Bight of Benin (Nigeria and Cameroon)

Gabon

Angola

3. The Angolan coast supplied nearly half the slaves sent to the Americas.

Organization
1. The notion of ethnic groups, combing a common language and customs with a political structure is mistaken. Atlantic Africa was divided into states (political units) and nations (cultural units). Slavery was a royal enterprise; the European kings sponsored slavery and issued assientos, royal slaving permits. These were sold to the elite merchants of the day and become items of value like stocks and shares today. Ovando, the Spanish governor of Hispaniola complained not to export anymore Africans as they were aggressive and reinforcing the ranks of resistance among the Native-Americans. These early imported Muslim Africans were proving hard to handle but as labor shortage got critical due to the waning of the indigenous population, Ovando reassessed the situation and demanded that Africans be sent. Royal decree targeted the Guinea coast in a mandate, which was to avoid the Islamic African influence. However, over the duration of the trade approximately 30% of those sent to the New World were Muslims

2. While some states were quite large, others were quite modest in size and many were tiny, consisting of a capital town of a few thousand people and a dozen villages under its control.
3. In the 17th century, 70 percent of the people lived in states with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.
4. Private wealth usually derived from control of dependents–clients, pawns, wives in polygynous households, and indentured servants.

African Slavery

1. African law recognized slavery but respected the culture and linage of those that were enslaved. Slaves were also part of the family and often the line between slave and non-slave was blurred.

2. A relatively low population density existed in Africa as compared to Europe and Asia. This low density had profound impact on Africa’s development potential after slavery became a economic mainstay of Europe.

3. Slavery had existed in the medieval empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, and slave exports had supplemented the export of gold. Most of those enslaved where prisoners of war or debt criminals. Large prisons were not a concept and hence slavery was a system to deal with undesirables.

4. Although African slavery was generally domestic slavery akin to indentured servitude. In Africa the enslaved were used in a wider variety of ways than in the New World: they were employed as agricultural workers, soldiers, scribes, servants, and government officials.

5. The great majority of slaves sold to Europeans were not slaves in Africa; they were usually recent war captives or victims of banditry and judicial proceedings.

6. Chattel slavery, manumission and social ascension were very rare.

7. Multi-generational slavery was uncommon in Africa; in part this reflected the fact that most African slaves were women.

8. During the early years of enslavement, African slaves usually worked under supervision. Then many became “allotment slaves,” who worked five or six days until about 2 p.m. on the master’s lands, and in the evenings and on their days off, worked their own plots. In the third stage settled slaves spent most of their time working their land in exchange for a fixed obligation, usually what it took to feed an adult male for a year.

Slave Trade

1. During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, 90% of those enslaved, were sent to the Caribbean and the South America.

2. The Atlantic slave trade carried about two to three men for every woman.

3. The slave trade reduced the adult male population by about 20 percent, dramatically altering the ratio of working adults to dependents and of adult men to adult women.

4. One result of unbalanced sex ratios was to further encourage polygyny.

5. Another result was to reduce traditional male forms of work, such as hunting, fishing, livestock rearing, the clearing of fields, the chopping down of trees, and the digging up of roots. The result was a less protein rich diet and a reduction in agricultural productivity.

6. About 14 percent of slaves sent to the New World were children under 14; 56 percent were male adults; and 30 percent were female adults.

Myths About Slave Trade and Slavery

Myth: Not all African women were forced to sleep with the slave masters (raped).Fact: Rape is not only grabbing someone and throwing them in the bush and forcing sex on them against their will—that is violent rape. But there is another kind of rape that went on during all oppressions placed on African people. There was also a process of fear, which persuaded African women to lay with their oppressors and give into the masters wants or suffered a life of misery: Exposed to the lash of an overseer in the hot sun, or had your entire family split up to the abyss by the speculators. Another form of what is a social rape is to create a society so oppressed that it seeks from the enslaved some way to lighten the color of its children so they might escape the whip of slavery and the taboo of “blackness.” The implanting of the notion of a helpless African man, contrasted against the power and security—and hence superiority of the White man—was also a mental form of oppression imposed on African women. See “Incidents of a slave girl” Harriet Jacobs.

Myth: Slavery is a product of capitalism.Fact: The transatlantic slave trade is in direct relationship with modern concepts of exploitive capitalism. Capitalism was the driver behind the transatlantic slave trade (see Eric Williams)

Myth: Slavery is a product of Western Civilization.Fact: Slavery is virtually a universal institution. However the industrialized chattel slavery the race base nature and the duration are peculiar to the transatlantic slave trade.

Myth: Slavery in the non-western world was a mild, benign, and non-economic institution.Fact: Slaves were always subject to torture, sexual exploitation, and arbitrary death. However the scale of the brutality and the institutionalization of people as chattel was unique in type and proliferation in the Western slave models.

Myth: Slavery was an economically backward and inefficient institution.Fact: Many of the most progressive societies in the world had slaves. Forms of slavery allowed the building of many of the world’s empires. Today the low wage lower classes and machines fill the roles slaves traditionally did in society. So still the wealthy today exist because of some form of exploitation of the majority.

Myth: Slavery was always based on race.Fact: Not until the 15th century was slavery associated primarily with people of African descent. Race became a factor which justified enslavement once it became the mainstay of Western economies. (see Black Codes)

Enslavement and the Slave Trade

Myth: New World slaves came exclusively from West Africa.Fact: Half of all New World slaves came from central Africa.

Myth: Europeans physically enslaved Africans or hired mercenaries who captured people for export or that African rulers were “Holocaust abettors” who were themselves to blame for the slave trade.Fact: Europeans did engage in some slave raiding; the majority of people who were transported to the Americas were enslaved by Africans in Africa. Europeans politically created anarchy in Africa feeding greed and putting others in a dilemma “sell or be sold.” With the destruction of the economy and the absences of the most virile in African societies slavery became a mono-economy feeding the cycle of destruction. Europeans created mechanisms which ensured conflict and the push-pull demand for slaves.

Myth: Many slaves were captured with nets.Fact: There is no evidence that slaves were captured with nets; war was the most important source of enslavement.

Myth: Kidnapping was the usual means of enslavement.Fact: War was the most important source of enslavement; it would be incorrect to reduce all of these wars to slave raids.

Myth: The Middle Passage stripped enslaved Africans of their cultural heritage and transformed them into docile, passive figures wholly receptive to the cultural inputs of their masters.Fact: Slaves engaged in at least 250 documented shipboard rebellions. The destruction of African culture happen not on the slave ships but via the plantation system where Christianity and terror were used to mentally enslave African people. Evidence shows that in areas where new African slaves were constantly being introduced (such as Jamaica) had more incidences of rebellion due to the resistance of the new arrivals.

Slavery in the Americas

Myth: Most slaves were imported into what is now the United StatesFact: Well over 90 percent of slaves from Africa were imported into the Caribbean and South America

Myth: Slavery played a marginal role in the history of the AmericasFact: African slaves were the only remedy for the labor shortages that plagued Europe’s New World dominions. Fact: Slave labor made it profitable to mine for precious metal and to harvest sugar, indigo, and tobacco; slaves taught whites how to raise such crops as rice and indigo.

Myth: Europeans arrived in the New World in far larger numbers than did Africans.

Fact: Before 1820, the number of Africans outstripped the combined total of European immigrants by a ratio of 3, 4, or 5 to 1.Myth: The first slaves arrived in what is now the U.S. in 1619Fact: Slaves arrived in Spanish Florida at least a century before 1619 and a recently uncovered census shows that blacks were present in Virginia before 1619.

Slave Culture

Myth: The slave trade permanently broke slaves’ bonds with Africa.Fact: Slaves were able to draw upon their African cultural background and experiences and use them as a basis for life in the New World. The drum and the Griot tradition are still alive in the music of the Diaspora. The food and elements of the language, the social structure, the “cool” still are defining characteristics of the African Diaspora. The greatest disconnection with Africa may have actually happened post-emancipation where being American or being more integrated allowed cultural drift into a more Eurocentric identity.

Myth: Plantation life with its harsh labor, unstable families, and high mortality, made it difficult for Africans to construct social tiesFact: African nations persisted in America well into the 18th century and even the early 19th century despite the overt destruction of the family the denouncement of religious and marital values.

Myth: Masters assigned names to slaves or slaves imitated masters’ systems of naming.Fact: In fact, slaves were rarely named for owners. Naming patterns appear to have reflected African practices, such as the custom of giving children “day names” (after the day they were born) and “name-saking,” such as naming children after grandparents.

Myth: Slaveholders sought to deculturate slaves by forbidding African names and languages and obliterating African culture.Fact: While deculturation was part of the “project” of slavery, in fact African music, dance, decoration, design, cuisine, and religion exerted a profound, ongoing influence on American culture.Fact: Slaves adapted religious rites and perpetuated a rich tradition of folklore.

Economics of Slavery

Myth: Slaveholders lost money and were more interested in status than moneymaking; slaves did little productive workFact: Slaves worked longer days, more days, and more of their life. The life expectancy of enslaved Africans in places like Barbados was a few decades due to the strain of labor.

Myth: Slavery was incompatible with urban life and factory technologyFact: Sugar mills were the first true factories in the world; slaves were widely used in cities and in various kinds of manufacturing and crafts.

Myth: Slaves engaged almost exclusively in unskilled brutish field labor.Fact: Much of the labor performed by slaves required high skill levels and careful, painstaking effort.Fact: Masters relied on slaves for skilled craftsmanship.

Religion

Myth: West and Central Africans received their first exposure to Christianity in the New World.Fact: Most Africans learned about Christianity as they learned about the European trade in enslaved Africans. A few Catholic missionary activities began in the central African kingdom of Kongo half a century before Columbus’s voyages of discovery and Kongo converted to Catholicism in 1491.

Myth: The Catholic Church did not tolerate the mixture of Catholicism with traditional African religions.Fact: In Kongo and in Latin America, the Church did tolerate the mixture of Catholicism with African religions, allowing Africans to retain their old cosmology, understanding of the universe, and the place of gods and other divine beings in the universe.

Myth: Before the Civil War, the Southern churches were highly segregated.Fact: In 1860, slave constituted about 26 percent of the Southern Baptist church membership.

Myth: Slave Christianity was essentially a “religion of docility.”Fact: Christianity was dual edged and marked by millennialist possibilities; whites could not prevent black preachers from turning Christianity into a source of self-respect and faith in deliverance.

Myth: Slaves were brainwashed and stunned into submission and rarely resisted slavery.Fact: Resistance took a variety of forms ranging from day-to-day resistance, economic bargaining, running away and maroonage, and outright rebellions

Slavery and World History

1. The most ancient civilizations–ancient Mesopotamia, Old Kingdom Egypt, and the budding civilization that formed in the Indus and Yangtze river valleys–all had some form of slavery present in their earliest years.
2. In none of these cultures did slaves constitute a large proportion of the population.
3. It was in classical Greece and Rome that the first true slave societies came into existence. From the 5th to the 3rd centuries b.c., perhaps a third to a half of Athens’s population consisted of slaves. Slaves constituted as much as 30 percent of Rome’s population.
4. England’s Domesday book of 1086 indicated that 10 percent of the population was enslaved.
5. Although slavery is often stigmatized as archaic and backward, slavery has been found in many of the most progressive societies.
6. Contrary to what many think, slavery never disappeared from medieval Europe. Domestic slavery persisted in Sicily, southern Italy, Russia, southern France, Spain, and elsewhere.

'Alik Shahadah is a master of the Documentary format and progressive African scholar. Shahadah uses film for social revolution. A multi-award winning recipient including the rare UNESCO award for his critically acclaimed film on slavery 500 Years Later.. He is best known for authoring works, which deal with African history, social justice, environmental issues, education and world peace. He states his primary motivation for making these films was being frustrated with "Tarzan's voice" as the central narrator in African stories. He noted that while scholarship challenges these issues, the common knowledge of the majority is generally unaltered, writing alone is not enough, the ultimate tool for re-education on a mass level is film

“It was a human personality that betrayed truth and justice when under duress, there is a more worrying and insidious human personality of greed and myopic ambition that has found its way through history into the current African leadership, that sells it resources and condemns its people to poverty to service Western designs, which reward this betrayal with trinkets.” - Nail On The Head. That’s is exactly what it was and everyone forgets it when they get caught up in these arguments

Rising Star

Rising Star

Recalling Africa’s harrowing tale of its first slavers – The Arabs – as UK Slave Trade Abolition is commemorated

In his book, Slaves and Slavery, published in 1998, the British writer Duncan Clarke defines slavery as “the reduction of fellow human beings to the legal status of chattels, allowing them to be bought and sold as goods”. This, in essence, is what both the Arabs and Europeans did to Africans, to justify the shipping of millions of Africans as slaves to far-away lands in Asia (in particular, the Middle East) and the Americas.

“The African slave trade, surely one of the most tragic and disturbing episodes in the history of mankind,” Clarke writes, “had its origins in the intervention of forces from the civilisations that developed in the regions of the Mediterranean sea — today’s Europe and the Middle East — into the arena of the more fragmented civilisations of sub-Saharan Africa.

“Africa became a source of slaves for the cultures of the Mediterranean world many centuries before the discovery of the Americas, but it was that discovery and the resulting shift in focus towards the Atlantic that prompted the culminating explosive growth in slavery with such tragic effect.”

Slavery, in fact, was a central feature of life in the Mediterranean world, especially in Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Greece, Imperial Rome and the Islamic societies of the Middle East and North Africa.

“The most important source of slaves in medieval Europe,” Clarke’s research shows, “was the coast of Bosnia on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea. The word ‘slave’ and its cognates in most modern European languages is itself derived from ‘sclavus’ meaning ‘slav’, the ethnic name for the inhabitants of this region…

“For various reasons, including the harshness of the terrain and endemic warfare among local clans, Bosnia proved the most convenient and long-lasting of these slave-supplying regions. Whichever clan gained a temporary upper hand was
always willing to sell its captured rivals in exchange for the goods of the Mediterranean world in the markets of the ancient Romanised city of Ragusa (present day Dubrovnik). From there, Slavs were shipped as slaves by Venetian merchants, to supply new markets in the Islamic world.”

Thus, “for the Islamic world,” Clarke continues, “Slavs provided the major source of slaves in the 250 or so years between the defeat at the battle of Poitiers in AD 732 that forced the consolidation of their dramatic conquests across North Africa and the Iberian peninsula, cutting back the flow of war captives, and the expansion of the im port of black Africans across the Sahara from around AD 1000.”

The trade in slaves ended when the Ottoman Turk s conquered the region in 1463. “The effective closure of the last major source of slaves on the European continent,” says Clarke, “thus co-incidentally took place at the same time as the Portuguese explorations of the West African coast which were to open up the second and most devastating route for the exploitation of Africans as slaves.”

Figures on the Arab slave trade in Africa are hard to come by, but the historian Paul Lovejoy estimates that some 9.85 million Africans were shipped out as slaves to Arabia and, in small numbers, to the Indian subcontinent. Lovejoy breaks his figures down as follows:

Between AD 650 and 1600, an average of 5,000 Africans were shipped out by the Arabs. This makes a rough total of 7.25 million.

Then, between 1600 and 1800, another 1.4 million Africans were shipped out by the Arabs. The 19th century represented the highest point of the Arabian trade where 12,000 Africans were shipped out every year. The total figure for the 19th century alone was 1.2 million slaves to Arabia.

The numbers game

Thus, in terms of numbers, Arabia’s 9.85 million is not far behind the conservative estimate of nearly 12 million African victims of the Atlantic slave trade. Some African historians, though, reject these figures on the grounds that they are too low. They suggest over 50 million Africans were shipped out during the Atlantic trade alone.

According to Lovejoy, another 4.1 million Africans were shipped across the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf and India. “This trade also, with the notable exception of some Portuguese involvement in the area of Mozambique, and of 18th and 19th century French exports to islands under their control in the Indian Ocean, was largely conducted by Muslims,” adds Duncan Clarke.

Through out the 19th century, the Omani Arab rulers of Zanzibar shipped hundreds of thousands of African slaves to work on clove plantations on the island. It was this trade that gave Europe and America so much satisfaction, after abolishing their own trade in African slaves, to highlight the wickedness of the Arab slavers who continued to enslave Africans well into the first decades of the 20th century. Even to this day, Arab slavers are still at work in Sudan and Mauritania, buying and selling black Africans.

David Livingstone, the British missionary/traveller/explorer was so upset by the way the Arabs treated their African slaves that he wrote back home in 1870:

“In less than I take to talk about it, these unfortunate creatures — 84 of them, wended their way into the village where we were. Some of them, the eldest, were women from 20 to 22 years of age, and there were youths from 18 to 19, but the large majority was made up of boys and girls from 7 years to 14 or 15 years of age.

“A more terrible scene than these men, women and children, I do not think I ever came across. To say that they were emaciated would not give you an idea of what human beings can undergo under certain circumstances. “Each of them had his neck in a large forked stick, weigh ing from 30 to 40 pounds, and five or six feet long, cut with a fork at the end of it where the branches of a tree spread out. “T he women were tethered with bark thongs, which are, of all things, the most cruel to be tied with. Of course they are soft and supple when first striped off the trees, but a few hours in the sun make them about as hard as the iron round packing-cases. The little children were fastened by thongs to their mothers. “As we passed along the path which these slaves had travelled, I was shown a spot in the bushes where a poor woman the day before, unable to keep on the march, and likely to hinder it, was cut down by the axe of one of these slave drivers. “We went on further and were shown a p lace where a child lay. It had been been recently born, and its mother was unable to carry it from debility and exhaustion; so the slave trader had taken this little infant by its feet and dashed its brains out against one of the trees and thrown it in there.”

Such was the brutality meted out to the Africans by the Arabs. Like the Atlantic trade, the Arabian trade’s “middle passage” was equally as horrible and terrifying. The “middle passage” describes the harrowing journey lasting several months from Africa’s west coast to the Americas during which millions of Africans, packed like sardines in the slave ships, died of thirst, hunger, rough seas, and sometimes from the sheer brutality inflicted by the European slavers.

In the Arabian trade, the trudge across the Sahara, in leg and neck chains, and as Livingstone describes above, necks in large forked sticks and hands tied with bark thongs, was particularly harsh on the African slaves.

Says Duncan Clarke: “The hardships of these long marches across the desert were considerable, and much later travellers reported that the routes were lined with the parched skeletons of those who succumbed to exhaustion and thirst along the way.”

The Arab slavers did not only march their African captives to Arabia, they also sometimes sold them to European slavers.
In modern times, the popular image of African slavery springs from the vision of a tormented male suffering under the lash of unceasing labour on some “New World” sugar plantation.

Yet the real face of servitude finds its focus in the forced migration of millions of girls and young women across the Sahara and the Horn of Africa in to the institutions of Islamic concubinage.

Why they preferred women

While in the European “New W o r ld ”, the measure of a man’s stature was mapped out and calibrated on the physical dimensions of empire built upon the sinews of forced masculine labour, in the Islamic Orient wealth was a reflection of prestige, young girls the vessel of male h u b r is , th e mats of male pleasure ground, the malleable material to be shaped to the master’s will.

Thus, women slaves in the Arab world were often turned into concubines living in harems, and rarely as wives, their children becoming free. A large number of male slaves and young boys were castrated and turned into eunuchs who kept watch over the harems. Castration was a particularly brutal operation with a survival rate of only 10%.

“The combined effect of all these factors,” says Duncan Clarke, “was a steady demand for slaves throughout the Islamic world, which had cover story to be met from wars, raids or purchases along the borders with non-Islamic regions. Although some of these slaves came from Russia, the Balkans and central Asia, the continuing expansion of Islamic regimes in sub-Saharan Africa made black Africans, the major source.”

So invasive was the practice of slavery into the economic, political, demographic, cultural, social and religious life of Africa and persisted for so many centuries, that while its effects varied both geographically and temporally in intensity, slavery out-distances in scale and scope any single or combination of disasters — natural or man-made, which descended upon the continent.

Slavery unquestionably checked population growth in Africa and consequentially placed tremendous pressure upon gender and marital relationships during the three critical centuries of European expansion to global domination.

In this sense, the feminine-oriented Arab slave trade, though neither motivated nor executed with economic benefits as prime objective, caused far greater demographic damage and consequently greater economic decline, with its excessive poaching of the reproductive potential of the harvested areas.

The impact on Africa

No people are blank slates upon which can be inscribed untold miseries and expect no account thereof. The Arab slave trade began long before the Islamic conquest of Africa, remained at relatively low level compared to the Atlantic slave trade and did not become illegal or abolished, and was maintained till well after the colonisation of Africa. The Arabian trade was outlawed in Ethiopia only in 1935 in order to gain international support against the Italian invasion.

In the Atlantic trade, the slaves came predominantly from Africa’s west coast with a male/female ratio of two-to-one. In the Arabian trade, the slaves were exclusively from the Savannah and the Horn of Africa, and favoured females over males at a ratio nearing three-to-one.

When slavery in the Black Sea area (the traditional source of the best grade female slaves for the Arab market) dried up, it triggered an even greater demand for Ethiopian “red” slaves, in particular the Galla and Oromo on account of their unquestioned beauty and willing sexual temperament.

And while the Europeans paid a higher price for male slaves than females, the reverse was the case with the Arabs. Moreover, while the European/New World slavers profited mainly from male labour, the Arabs saw profit in sexual satisfaction/reproductive potential. (Offspring of the union between Islamic master and female slave was born free, out of respect of the child’s Islamic paternity. Any offspring of the Atlantic trade were born into slavery).

“The laws of Islam ,” as the historian Hugh Thomas attests, “were in some ways more benign in respect of slavery than were those of Rome. Slaves were not to be treated as if they were animals. Slaves and freemen were equal from the point of view of God. The master did not have power of life and death over his slave property.”

But to the Africans shipped across the Red Sea, the “benign” Islamic laws provided little comfort — they were still slaves of Islamic masters who had unfettered sexual access to them (if they were female) or castrated and turned into eunuchs (if they were men).

The upshot of this gender profile of the respective slave-classes in the Atlantic/New World and the Arab/Oriental world explains the large and visible population of African origin in the New World where sexual relations between white and black was the exception while in the Arab world where miscegenation was the practice, the slave trade has left few visible traces.

So where are the descendants of the African slaves sent to Arabia/Orient? There are no large concentrations of them, anywhere in the Middle East or Asia.

Five years ago, a British TV documentary showed how poorly the descendants of African slaves in Pakistan are treated by the authorities. The racial discrimination was so bad that one of the African descendants recounted on camera how, even in sport, they were not picked to represent Pakistan at national and international levels no matter how good they were.

Population decline

The demographic effects of Arabian slavery on the source population (those left behind) cannot be overlooked, and specifically when considering the palpable effects on African fertility as a consequence of the grossly reduced female numbers.

To ensure survival, the Africans in the harvested areas adopted a variety of social measures, which were in practice as extreme as the circumstances called for. These revolved principally around the sexual purity of the population’s remaining female reproductive stock, as well as accelerating the female’s reproductive capacity.

Though the number of female slaves exported per annum from the Savannah and the Horn was far smaller than the numbers taken from the west coast in the Atlantic trade, the proportionate impact of the remaining at-brink Savanna/Horn populations was far more severe.

The Arabian trade reached a total of perhaps 5-8% of the source populations – and as mentioned earlier — as the proportion of females harvested was exceptionally high, this resulted in a massive surplus of males in the non-harvested population. Consequently the area experienced demographic stagnation bordering decline.

In 1600, the black African population was some 50 million — about 30% of the combined population of the New World, Europe, Middle East and North Africa. By 1800, the population had fallen to 20% of the total. In 1900, at the end of the slave trade, Africa’s population had fallen yet further to just over 10% of the total — the population now so collapsed as to negatively affect the continent’s labour intensive agricultural output.

In effect, while the populations of Europe and Asia increased year on year, Africa’s population declined dramatically due to the excessive poaching by the slavers, both Arab and European.

In Arabia, the slave class (principally female), unlike the New World slave class, could never maintain itself as a distinct social entity — principally because of miscegenation. This created an even greater demand for more and more new female slaves, and coupled with the frequent natural disasters of drought and famine in the Savannah/Horn, led many African families to offer their young girls in to slavery as a last hope of survival. There are many stories of long lines of hundreds of girls, mainly Oromos from Ethiopia, trudging across the Horn towards the Red Sea seeking enslavement.

Deprived of ideology, ritual, and the African rite of passage to adulthood and social membership, female slaves were uncommonly vulnerable to conversion to Islam (the benefits of manumission aside). Manumission describes a child born of a female slave and a free Islamic father is thus born free.

For the population remaining in Africa, it is in order to embark on some speculation as to what changes the trauma o f slavery may have wrought on African thought. The experience o f sudden turn o f fate (a common experience when confronted by the ever-present threat of slavers) tended to systematically undermine any efforts at long-term planning beyond the constant need to replace lost members.

It is a mistake to equate the bare survival o f Africa with cultural or social or economic stagnation, for the slave trade visited such panoply of tragically interconnected disasters into the lives of every African for centuries, that they have worked their way into the very “racial memory” of the continent and its people, particularly females, that only with time and kindness can it be expunged from the psyche o f Africa.

As one commentator puts it: “Could it be true that the corrosive effects of four centuries of commerce in humans, with its temptation, its in -built opportunism, its reduction of humans to a cash value, its cycles of revenge and its inevitable physical brutality, have built lasting flaws into African pattern of thought and action?”

Art Lover ❤️ Sex Addict®™

Art Lover ❤️ Sex Addict®™

The first known dentist was from Kemet named Hesi-Re, who was in charge of treating and alleviating the dental ailments of the Pharaohs. He was also a doctor who indicated the importance of the association between Medicine and Dentistry.

Art Lover ❤️ Sex Addict®™

A African Man from Aswan, Egypt,Africa of 1910.One of the Remnants of the African people who were the originals of great K.met before it was invaded and eventually taken over by Ottoman arabs and colonized by white supremacy europe.